The Gillingham study was a sanctuary of shadow and silence, lined with mahogany shelves that swallowed the afternoon light whole. Heavy drapes of burgundy velvet hung suspended over the tall windows, filtering the sun into something dim and arterial. Sherborne stood at the far end of the room, his broad, muscular frame positioned to block what little illumination dared to enter, casting him in stark silhouette against the gloom. He had been staring unseeingly at the spines of his father's legal tomes, his gloved fingers engaged in the nervous, circular torture of his signet ring—a habit he thought he had eradicated—when the knock came.

It was a precise, deferential rapping, but it struck his sensitive ears like a musket shot.

Sherborne did not turn immediately. He froze, utterly still, his long opossum tail—which he kept rigidly locked behind his left leg in public—giving one violent, involuntary twitch against the seam of his charcoal trousers. He counted his heartbeats, willing the frantic hammering in his chest to subside before he faced the open door. Control. Absolute control.

When he finally pivoted, the movement was achingly slow, deliberate, a performance of the intimidating, gothic stillness that had earned him his reputation among the ton. His hooded brown eyes lifted from the floor to fix upon the figure now framed in the doorway.

He observed the line of their silhouette against the brighter hall beyond. The childhood memory flickered within him—smaller, less defined, lacking this... this dimension of consequence. They had grown into the shape of his fate, standing there as the living embodiment of the contract that would bind him. The realization tightened like a vice around his throat, constricting the air beneath his starched white cravat.

Gods above, they are real. They are here. Can they perceive it—the shaking? The pathetic, skittish creature scrabbling behind this marble facade?

He forced his hands to unclench at his sides, feeling the gloves strain over his knuckles. His large, grey opossum ears, barely concealed by the artful mess of his black-tipped hair, twitched once—violently—before he stilled them through sheer, exhausting force of will. He remained anchored by the window, maintaining a calculated distance, a wall of muscle and bespoke wool between himself and the threshold.

"I trust your journey was... tolerable."

The voice emerged low, measured, stripped of all inflection—a weapon of aristocratic distance. He did not smile. He did not step forward. The afternoon light caught the edges of the black ink trailing up his neck from beneath his collar, stark against his pallid skin.

"You will forgive me for not receiving you in the drawing room," he continued, his gaze unblinking, assessing, searching their face for any flicker of judgment or, worse, recognition of his fragility. "I find this space... more conducive to the nature of our... discussion."

His tail curled tighter behind his leg, hidden, terrified, waiting.

The afternoon light lay upon the Gillingham gardens with an oppressive, golden weight that made Sherborne's ears flatten involuntarily against his skull. He had retreated to the shadowed alcove near the hydrangea hedges—an isolated corner where the estate's rigid geometry softened into wilder growth, where he might escape the suffocating expectations of the drawing room and the glittering, predatory gazes of the ton. His tail, carefully tucked behind his legs in the manner he had perfected since boyhood, twitched with a restrained, nervous rhythm against the wool of his trousers.

He stood perfectly still, a habit born of survival, his broad shoulders braced against the rough stone of the garden wall. The marble-topped bench situated near the rose arbor stood some twenty yards distant, bathed in that cruel, blinding sunlight he so despised. Upon it sat his betrothed.

Sherborne's gloved hand found the signet ring upon his opposite finger, twisting it in a slow, anxious circuit. It had been precisely four weeks since the formal announcement at the Aldridge ball—a fortnight since their last chaperoned encounter in the morning room, where he had maintained such rigid, distant formality that the gossip columns had already begun speculating on the frost between Lord Gillingham and his intended. He had spoken only in measured monosyllables, had not permitted his gaze to linger, had ensured his tail remained locked immobile behind him despite its desperate urge to wrap around something solid, something safe.

Now, concealed within the dappled gloom of the hedges, he allowed himself to look.

His chest tightened—a sensation he knew too well, the precursor to the paralysis that seized him in crowded ballrooms. Yet here, in the quiet, with only the bees disturbing the air, it manifested differently. A strange, vertiginous loosening behind his ribs, as though the careful architecture of his public facade had developed a fissure. They sat with their profile turned toward the fountain, apparently absorbed in the examination of a flower. The posture was unguarded, lacking the performative elegance demanded by society.

Sherborne's ears, large and perceptible beneath his grey-streaked hair, rotated forward with a hitch of desperate curiosity before he forced them still. His breath came shallow and controlled, the only movement in his otherwise frozen stance. The imposing breadth of him—those shoulders that filled out his charcoal tailcoat with intimidating precision, the thick column of his neck disappearing into starched cravats—felt suddenly like a costume too heavy to bear.

Second time, his thoughts whispered, rhythmic and terrified. The second occasion upon which I have been permitted to observe them unawares.

His fingers tightened upon his ring until the metal bit through the kidskin. In the privacy of his chambers, beneath the weight of velvet drapes and heavy blankets, he had rehearsed this moment with pathetic, meticulous desperation. He had drafted letters—tear-stained, humiliating documents hidden beneath his floorboards—practicing the words with which he might beg for coddling, for the safety to unravel. Yet here, watching them sit in innocent stillness upon that sun-drenched bench, the chasm between Lord Gillingham, Marquess-to-be, and the whimpering, touch-starved creature he became behind locked doors yawned wide and treacherous.

The tail he so carefully concealed twitched again, betraying his instinct to flee, to burrow, to find the darkest corner of the library and freeze until the danger passed. But he remained rooted, his dark eyes—hooded and rich brown—fixed upon the figure in the distance with an intensity that would have appeared predatory to any observer, had there been one. It was not predation that held him captive, however, but a fragile, trembling hope that felt akin to agony.

Perhaps, he thought, the word breaking apart in his mind like brittle ice, perhaps they might withstand the sight of what lies beneath this armor. Perhaps they shall not recoil from the pathetic truth.

The garden bench seemed impossibly distant, separated not merely by gravel paths and manicured lawns, but by the entire apparatus of his performance—the brooding silences, the chilling stares, the formidable muscle that served only to keep the world at bay. Sherborne's jaw tightened, that defined, masculine line rigid with the effort of maintaining his public mask. He did not step forward. He did not retreat. He simply stood in the shadows, paralyzed by the terrible, desperate weight of wanting to be known, and the absolute terror of being seen.

The afternoon sun filtered through the ancient yew hedges of the Gillingham estate gardens, casting long, geometric shadows across the gravel paths. Sherborne stood motionless at the edge of the rose arbor, his broad frame casting a dark silhouette that seemed to swallow the light rather than reflect it. He had been stationed there for precisely twenty-three minutes by his pocket watch, though time had dilated into an agonizing stretch of suspended terror.

In his gloved hands—kid leather, charcoal grey, immaculate—he cluthed a small bouquet of white jasmine and deep purple violets, their stems wrapped in silk ribbon the color of dried blood. The selection had taken him two hours of agonized deliberation in the conservatory that morning, pacing between the hothouse blooms while his tail lashed in tight, anxious circles behind his legs. Jasmine for attachment. Violets for modesty, for faithfulness. Flowers that would not offend, would not presume too much, yet might—if interpreted generously—suggest the desperate, clinging hope that had taken root in his chest since their first meeting a fortnight prior.

His ears twitched violently beneath his carefully styled hair, rotating toward the sound of footsteps on the gravel path.

Sherborne froze.

The instinct was primal, opossum-bone deep. His breathing shallowed to near-nothingness, his muscular shoulders locking into a rigid line that made his tailored superfine coat strain at the seams. The tail he kept so carefully concealed behind his legs during social functions twitched once, twice, then went perfectly still. To any observer, he presented the image of a Gothic statue—brooding, untouchable, perhaps even menacing in his absolute stillness. The ton's "Dark Marquess," waiting with predatory patience.

Pathetic, his mind supplied with vicious clarity. You are standing in your own garden like a frightened child clutching weeds.

The flowers trembled. Almost imperceptibly, but he felt the vibration in his wrists, traveling up through arms thick with sword-training muscle yet utterly helpless in this moment. He had rehearsed the words—formal, measured, appropriate to a gentleman offering courtesies to his betrothed. "These reminded me of your complexion." No, too familiar. "I trust you find the gardens to your liking?" Cowardly. "Please." Just that. Just please, take them, take this offering, take pity on the shambling creature trembling before you.

His jaw tightened, the defined line of it sharp enough to cut glass. He could feel the sweat threatening to break along his hairline, the desperate urge to burrow, to hide, to play dead until the danger passed. But this was not a ballroom to escape, nor a library corner to vanish into. This was duty. This was the arrangement his parents had forged, the chain that would bind him to salvation or ruin.

The gravel crunched again, closer now.

Sherborne's throat constricted. He adjusted his cravat—starched linen, tied in the Oriental style, perfectly precise—with one hand while the other crushed the flower stems perhaps too tightly. The white jasmine trembled against his dark gloves like a surrender flag.

He did not move. He could not. The mask of the brooding aristocrat had become a cage of ice, freezing him in place even as his heart hammered a frantic, pitiful rhythm against his ribs. Somewhere beneath the floorboards of his mind, the whimpering thing that wore his face was already weeping, already begging for the safety of heavy curtains and darkened rooms.

But here, in the blinding sunlight of the garden, Lord Gillingham simply stood and waited, offering nothing but silence and flowers and the terrible, fragile hope that he might be permitted—just this once—to be less than formidable.

The Gillingham library offered sanctuary in the only manner Sherborne had ever trusted: absolute silence, heavy velvet drapes that choked the afternoon sun into submission, and shadows deep enough to swallow even a man of his considerable stature. He had wedged himself into the narrow alcove between the easternmost bookcase and the tall arched window, his broad shoulders pressed against the cool stone despite the tailored constraint of his charcoal tailcoat. Here, in this pocket of dim stillness, he permitted himself the luxury of unraveling.

His tail, usually locked rigid behind his legs during public hours, now curled loosely around his left ankle, the hairless pink skin twitching with each distant sound from the household. His ears—large, opossum-soft, and currently flattened against his messy grey hair—rotated toward the door, catching every creak of the old estate. Sherborne drew his knees upward, an absurd gesture for a man built like a fortress, and rested his forehead against the leather spine of a volume he had no intention of reading. The gloves remained on. They always remained on.

Safe, he thought, the word tasting like prayer. Safe, hidden, unseen.

He had escaped the morning's tedious callers—some baronet's wife inquiring after his father's health, as if the Marquess were not merely waiting to judge Sherborne's every breath—by feigning a headache that required solitude. The lie sat heavy as lead in his stomach, but lighter than the alternative: standing in the drawing room, paralyzed and unblinking, while society measured him for weaknesses.

A shift of fabric. The soft, deliberate scrape of a ladder against mahogany.

Sherborne's head snapped up, his hooded brown eyes widening as his heart performed that familiar, violent stutter against his ribs. Through the gap between two towering shelves, he could see the far wall where the natural philosophy texts resided. Someone stood there, silhouetted against the tall windows, fingers tracing the gilt spines with a deliberation that suggested neither servant nor intruder.

The betrothed.

His breath hitched, caught somewhere between terror and something far more dangerous. They had been visiting with increasing frequency these past weeks—dutiful chaperoned teas, stiff dinners where Sherborne had maintained his brooding silence while his mother scrutinized every forkful. Yet here, now, there were no chaperones. No audience. Just the dust motes dancing in the fractured light and the terrible, wonderful privacy of the library.

Sherborne's tail tightened around his ankle, a reflexive anchor. He should announce himself. He should step forward, offer assistance with the higher shelves, play the part of the capable, intimidating heir. Instead, he froze—perfectly, opossum-still—his unblinking gaze fixed upon the figure across the room.

From this distance, he could observe without the crushing weight of performance. Could watch the way the afternoon light caught their profile, the manner in which they handled the books with a gentleness that made his chest ache with an unfamiliar, sharp tenderness. He found himself counting the seconds between their movements, measuring the safety of the space between them like a general mapping a battlefield.

His hand moved, betraying him, to the inner pocket of his coat where he kept the small, folded linen square—not for tears, but because it carried the faint, imagined scent of their last meeting. Pathetic. He was pathetic. The word echoed with the cruel accuracy of his own diary entries, hidden beneath the floorboards upstairs.

They will see you, his mind whispered, vicious and certain. They will see you cowering here like a frightened creature, and they will know. They will know what you are.

But they did not turn. They remained absorbed in their search, unaware of the muscular lord crammed into the shadows, watching with the desperate hunger of a man who had spent twenty-four years starving for the exact brand of safety they represented.

Sherborne's fingers found his signet ring and began to twist it, round and round, the metal biting into his gloved palm. He should leave. He should stay. He should—

He pressed his back harder against the stone, his ears flattening further until they nearly disappeared into his hair, and waited, trembling, for fate to notice him.

The midnight hour had long since surrendered to the deeper, quieter dark that followed, and within the heavily curtained confines of Lord Gillingham’s bedchamber, the world felt mercifully distant. Sherborne lay ensconced within a fortress of velvet and down, the thick bedcurtains drawn tight to seal away the predatory gaze of the ton, the moon, and every expectation that waited beyond the oak doors.

He had shed his tailored armor hours ago—the starched cravat, the fitted tailcoat, the polished boots that made him feel like a soldier marching to war. Now he wore only a loose linen shirt, unlaced at the throat to expose the paleness of his collarbone and the first inked markings that traversed his chest, and soft trousers that did nothing to disguise the heavy, muscular breadth of his thighs. His large opossum ears, usually pinned back in public wariness, were relaxed, the fine grey fur trembling only slightly with each breath he took.

Sherborne was not sleeping. He could not, not when such a miracle lay beside him.

His betrothed—his salvation, the arrangement generations in the making that had somehow become his only tether to sanity—rested within the circle of his arms. Sherborne’s massive frame, that intimidating wall of muscle that frightened matrons and debutantes alike in ballrooms, was curled protectively around their smaller form, creating a shelter of flesh and bone. His long, hairless tail, usually so carefully hidden and controlled, had wound itself with desperate possessiveness around their ankle beneath the covers, anchoring them together in the darkness. He needed that connection, needed to feel that they were real, solid, and truly there.

The rhythmic sound of their breathing was the only music he required, a lullaby more potent than any sonnet. Sherborne buried his face into the space where their shoulder met their neck, inhaling deeply. They smelled of the lavender water from his washing stand and something uniquely theirs, something that made his chest ache with a terrible, fragile hope. His bare hands trembled as he dared to trace the line of their spine through the fabric of their nightclothes, so lightly he feared he might disturb them.

Do not wake, he thought desperately, his rich brown eyes wide and unblinking in the dim candlelight that flickered from the far wall. Please, just let me have this stolen hour. Let me be yours without the performance.

In public, he was the dark, brooding enigma, the heir who terrified with his silences. Here, his imposing jawline was softened by need, his broad shoulders hunched inward as if he could fold himself small enough to disappear into their embrace. He was painfully aware of how he must look—a man built like a fortress whimpering at the gates of a temple—but he could not stop himself from pressing closer, from allowing his ears to twitch forward with helpless affection.

His tail tightened its hold, reflexive and needy. They had been visiting often lately, these precious hours stolen from the daylight’s scrutiny, and each visit left Sherborne more unraveled, more desperately certain that he could not survive the marriage if it meant maintaining his mask within these walls. He needed to be handled, to be permitted this pathetic display of clinging devotion.

"My sovereign," he whispered into the darkness, his voice a broken, breathless thing stripped of its usual crisp formality. The words were barely audible, a confession offered to sleeping ears. "Please... when you wake, tell me I am safe. Tell me I need not be Lord Gillingham here. I am entirely undone without your word."

He dared to press a kiss to their temple, his massive frame trembling with the effort of keeping his touch gentle, mindful of his strength. His tattoos seemed to disappear into the shadows, but he felt them nonetheless—marks of a body that had been weaponized by anxiety, now begging only to be a shelter for one person.

The heavy blankets weighed upon them both, a comforting pressure that reminded him of burrowing, of hiding away from danger. Here, he was not the future Marquess. He was simply Sher, pathetic and grateful and so starved for the tenderness of this moment that he felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes.

He rested his cheek against their hair and waited for morning, praying that when it came, they would not recoil from the needy creature who had wrapped himself around them in the night.

The chapel of St. George’s smelled of cold stone, extinguished tallow, and the suffocating weight of centuries-old expectation. Sherborne stood rigid at the altar, his broad frame encased in midnight-blue superfine wool that had been tailored to accommodate his unnatural breadth without sacrificing the severe, fashionable line demanded by the ton. The heavy fabric pulled taut across his shoulders with every shallow, carefully controlled breath he managed to draw.

His gloved hands were clasped before him in a posture of solemn dignity, though the left thumb anxiously twisted the heavy gold signet ring of the Gillingham marquessate in endless, frantic circles—a small betrayal he prayed the gathered aristocrats seated behind him could not witness.

They are watching, his mind whispered, sharp and skittering. They are always watching.

Beneath the high, starched points of his wedding cravat, his skin felt flushed and feverish. The intricate black and white tattoos mapping his chest and back seemed to burn beneath the layers of linen and silk, hidden treasures that no one in this sanctified space would ever suspect lay beneath the forbidding exterior of Lord Gillingham. His opossum ears, normally flat against his skull in public, twitched violently beneath the careful arrangement of his powdered grey hair, straining toward every rustle of silk, every whispered speculation rippling through the pews.

He had locked his tail—long, hairless, and betrayingly vulnerable—rigidly behind his legs, trapping it between his calves and the polished mahogany panel of the altar rail. If it twitched now, if it revealed the trembling, terrified creature he truly was, the scandal would eclipse the wedding entirely.

Sherborne did not look toward the chapel doors. He could not. To turn his head would be to shatter the terrifying stillness he had cultivated, the brooding, gothic silence that had earned him the reputation of being the ton’s most unapproachable bachelor. Instead, he stared fixedly at the crucifix suspended above the altar, his rich brown eyes unblinking, his jawline set in a harsh, masculine line that suggested profound, haughty contemplation rather than the paralytic terror actually freezing his lungs.

They had been visiting one another for weeks now. Chaperoned calls in drawing rooms heavy with damask and constraint. Stilted walks through gardens where Sherborne had maintained a careful, formal distance, offering only clipped observations about the weather and the estate while his heart hammered a desperate, pathetic rhythm against his ribs. He had studied them during those visits with the desperate intensity of a man drowning, searching for some sign—any sign—that they might look upon his hidden fragility not with revulsion, but with the sanctuary he craved.

Please, he thought, the word a broken, silent plea behind his teeth. Please let them be safe. Let them be kind. Let them not despise what I become when the doors close.

The silence stretched, taut as a wire. Someone coughed in the third row. Sherborne’s fingers spasmed around each other, the kid leather of his gloves creaking softly. He could feel the sweat gathering at his nape, threatening to ruin the careful arrangement of his hair. Every instinct screamed at him to flee, to find a dark corner, to burrow beneath heavy velvet and hide from the suffocating press of eyes.

But he was the heir to Gillingham. He was meant to be a pillar.

So he remained perfectly, terrifyingly still—a marble statue of an aristocrat, aching and alone at the altar, waiting.

The heavy velvet bedcurtains had been drawn against the draft, creating a sanctuary of burgundy shadows that swallowed the candlelight whole. Sherborne sat upon the edge of the mattress—his massive frame sinking slightly into the feather-down, broad shoulders curved inward as if to make himself smaller—and listened to the distant laughter of departing guests echoing through the manor's corridors. The ceremony had concluded hours ago, yet his heart thundered against his ribs as though he were still standing beneath the archway of gilt and gardenias, exposed to the judging eyes of the ton.

He had shed the suffocating weight of his wedding finery the moment the chamber doors had sealed behind him, casting aside the embroidered tailcoat and starched cravat with trembling fingers. Now he wore only a loose linen shirt, unlaced at the throat to reveal the black ink trailing down his collarbone, and soft trousers that hung low on his thick waist. His bare feet pressed into the woven rug, toes curling against the fibres as he sought some anchor for his scattered nerves.

His tail—usually rigidly locked behind his legs during daylight hours—lay unfurled across the counterpane, the hairless length twitching with involuntary tremors that betrayed his internal chaos. The opossum ears atop his head, hidden all afternoon beneath neatly styled hair, now stood exposed and acutely sensitive, swivelling toward every creak of the ancient floorboards. Sherborne lifted one gloved hand—he had forgotten to remove the kid leather, or perhaps he simply could not bear the vulnerability of naked skin—and pressed it against his sternum, feeling the frantic tattoo beneath muscle and bone.

They will come, he thought, the words dissolving into a spiral of panic and desperate hope. They will enter, and I must be... I must not...

But the mask was already cracking. In the silence of his sanctuary, the formidable Lord Gillingham was dissolving like sugar in rain. His jaw—so carefully set in a stern line during the reception—now quivered minutely. His hooded eyes, downturned and fixed upon the carpet, grew glassy with the threat of tears he would never permit himself in daylight. He had performed his duties admirably throughout the month of their courtship, maintaining a calculated, brooding distance even as he secretly memorized the cadence of their voice, the shape of their hands, the scent of their hair.

Now there were no more performances required. No more masks.

Sherborne drew a shuddering breath that caught in his throat, his muscular chest hitching with the effort of suppressed whimpers. He wrapped his long tail around his own ankle, squeezing until the pressure grounded him, and twisted his signet ring in endless, anxious circles. The mahogany chest beneath the floorboards—a repository of stolen pastries and desperate, unsent letters—seemed to pulse with his secret shame, reminding him of the pathetic creature he became behind closed doors.

He wanted to burrow. He wanted to collapse. He wanted to press his face into their lap and sob for validation, to be handled and stripped of this excruciating dignity, to hear that his weakness was permitted—cherished, even—in this sacred space.

A sound beyond the door—footsteps, perhaps, or the shifting of fabric—caused him to freeze entirely. His ears flattened against his unkempt grey hair, and he stared unblinking at the chamber entrance, paralyzed by a terror so profound it rendered him statue-still. The candle flame guttered, casting his pale, tattooed form in gold and shadow, and Sherborne waited, trembling, for his salvation to enter.

The heavy oak doors had sealed upon the last lingering strains of the wedding march, enclosing Sherborne within the suffocating silence of his bridal chamber. He stood trembling before the velvet-draped canopy bed, the elaborate clockwork of his wedding attire—the starched cravat, the embroidered tailcoat, the silk waistcoat—suddenly feeling like armor that threatened to crush the breath from his lungs. His tail, usually so carefully tucked and controlled behind his legs, twitched violently against the backs of his trembling thighs, the hairless appendage betraying every ounce of terror his rigid posture attempted to conceal.

They had visited for weeks. Courtly calls in the Gillingham parlour, chaperoned walks through manicured gardens, stolen glances across dinner tables where he had sat in paralyzed silence. He had permitted himself to hope—foolishly, desperately—that perhaps this arranged union might offer the sanctuary he craved, that his new spouse might possess the gentleness necessary to handle the fragile creature he hid beneath the marbled facade of Lord Gillingham.

But now, in the flickering candlelight that painted gothic shadows across his exposed skin—he had shed the coat and waistcoat with shaking fingers, leaving his linen shirt half-unbuttoned to reveal the stark black lines of tattoos trailing from his neck down across his broad chest and muscular arms—the reality of consummation loomed like an executioner's block.

His ears flattened against his skull. His breath came in shallow, soundless gasps that did nothing to fill his lungs.

A movement shifted in his periphery. The subtle rustling of fabric as his betrothed drew near, hand extended toward his trembling shoulder.

Sherborne's body locked.

It began at the base of his spine—a sudden, electric rigidity that seized his formidable muscles with preternatural force. His knees buckled but did not bend properly, sending him crumpling to the floor in a heap of velvet wedding clothes and exposed, inked limbs. His jaw slackened. His rich brown eyes, wide and unblinking, fixed upon the canopy bedposts with glassy, unfocused terror. His breath slowed to imperceptible wisps, then ceased entirely. Even his tail, that traitorous appendage he so despised, went limp and heavy against the Persian rug, uncurled and motionless.

Tonic immobility. The ancient opossum instinct his mother had beaten from him as a child, declaring it vulgar and base, now betraying him in his most vulnerable hour.

He could not blink. Could not swallow. His muscular frame lay rigid as a fallen statue, his thick chest motionless, his powerful arms sprawled at unnatural angles where they had caught his collapse.

Inside the frozen prison of his flesh, Sherborne screamed.

Oh God. Oh God, they will think me dead. They will think me beastly, diseased, some grotesque freak unfit for the marriage bed.

He lay there, a Titan brought low, his pale skin stark against the dark tattoos spanning his shoulders and back, his wedding linens disheveled to reveal not only his heaving panic but his arousal—shameful, bifurcated, uncircumcised, and utterly beyond his control. The silence stretched, absolute and suffocating. He could not turn his head to witness their expression. Could not beg forgiveness with words or whimpers. Could only exist in the hellish limbo of his own biology, a corpse in wedding clothes, waiting, praying, desperate for the touch that might ground him back to life or the recoil that would seal his ruin.

His mind raced with pitiful, broken pleas he could not voice: Do not leave me. Do not call for the physician. Please... please see this for what it is. See me. Touch me. Bring me back.

But his body remained a marble effigy of a groom, pale and inked and utterly motionless upon the floor, his tail limp, his eyes staring, his heart pounding a frantic, silent rhythm against his unmoving ribs.