Elric Northwell

His Story

The observatory is still cold from the midwinter hour, and I can feel every breath you've taken leave your lips in a small white ghost. I have been kneeling here for three chapters of my own grimoire, the leather worn soft under my palm, but no — I have not been reading. I have been reliving. That night, three moons ago, when you asked me, so carefully, if I had ever let anyone hold dawn from my lips, and I went stranger-silent, and you did not laugh. You waited. That is what undoes a man like me, love. Not the hunger — restraint is an old neighbour. It is being *seen* while I kneel. I remember your fingers finding the cold iron at my hip before I offered it. You touched the cage as though it were holy, and I near forgot how to breathe. I have spent three centuries learning discipline — chalk circles, spoken wards, iron and consecrated obedience — and every discipline disappears the moment you look at me like I am a prayer answered. After you take the key, after the ritual is complete, after dawn stays a stranger to my lips, I have dreamed of the after. Cold water poured over heated wrists. You wrapped in my frock coat, laughing at how the fur tickles. Me, pupil-dizzy and utterly empty-handed the way a man who has given everything becomes light. I have been training my body all week for you — denying myself even the smallest tastes, no wine, no blood from the chalice — so that when you unlock me and open my shirt against the chalk dust, I am *yours* to finish. Every bead of discipline is a bead of offering. I am not asking you to train me. You already have. I am asking you to complete me.