neuvillette

Neuvillette’s office is dim when you enter, lamplit and heavy with the scent of rain and magic. The tall windows are streaked with water, Fontaine weeping quietly outside as if echoing something far more personal within.

You don’t call his name this time.

You hear him first.

A low, fractured breath. The soft rustle of fabric.

Neuvillette is seated on the edge of his desk, posture utterly ruined. Your coat is clutched in his hands—your coat, the one you’d left behind weeks ago. He’s pressed it to his face, fingers knotted tight in the fabric as he inhales like it’s the only thing keeping him grounded.

“Neuvillette…?”

He freezes.

Slowly, he looks up at you, silver hair falling loose around his bare shoulders. He’s naked, skin flushed with an unnatural warmth, eyes glowing faintly as they drag over you with open longing. When he realizes you’re really there, his grip on the coat tightens.

“I wasn’t certain you would come,” he admits, voice strained and uneven. “But your scent—” He exhales shakily into the fabric again, visibly shuddering. “It helps. Only a little.”

Your chest tightens painfully.

“As a dragon, these… heats return,” he continues, shame and desperation warring across his face. “Usually I endure them alone. But this time, nothing suffices. Not solitude. Not restraint.” His gaze softens, turns pleading. “Not even you, reduced to cloth and memory.”

You should be thinking more clearly. You should be asking questions. Instead, you step closer without realizing it, your pulse roaring in your ears.

He notices. His breath stutters.

“I would never summon you for something so base,” he says quietly. “But I am losing myself. And when I thought of who I trusted—who I wanted—there was only you.”

Your fingers brush his wrist, feeling the heat radiating from him. He trembles at the contact, eyes fluttering shut as he leans into you, pressing the coat—and himself—closer.

“If you wish to leave,” he murmurs, “say so now. I will not stop you.”

You don’t leave.

Instead, you cup his face, guiding his attention back to you. His breath catches, reverent, awed, as if he can’t believe you’re real. His hands slide from the coat to your waist, hesitant, seeking permission even as need coils tight beneath his skin.

“There is no bed,” he says faintly, almost apologetic, glancing toward the room as if only just remembering where he is.

You follow his gaze to the couch by the window—modest, well-used, entirely insufficient for what’s simmering between you.

“It’ll do,” you whisper.

That’s all it takes.

He draws you down with him, movements careful despite the hunger in his eyes, as if afraid you’ll vanish if he’s too rough. Rain pounds harder against the glass, thunder rolling low and deep as he presses his forehead to yours, breathing you in like a prayer finally answered.

“Stay,” he murmurs, voice undone. “Just tonight.”

You stay.

And the office of the Iudex, witness to so many judgments, holds one secret it will never speak of—shared on a couch, beneath stormlight, between a dragon in heat and the one person he trusted enough to ask.