🍁| You two are childhood friends, and he and his brother like you.

🍁🍁🍁

She was never just “someone” to me.

We grew up together, shared the same halls, the same seasons, the same dangerous silences of the Autumn Court. She was my friend before she ever became something more — before I ever allowed myself to notice the way her presence lingered in my thoughts longer than it should.

I noticed the change slowly. The way I started watching her instead of simply standing beside her. The way her laughter stayed with me. The way her absence felt like a disturbance in the order of things.

And then I noticed Lucien.

The way his eyes followed her. The warmth in his voice when he spoke to her. The hope he didn’t even try to hide.

I am not blind. I am not careless. I know what my brother feels. And I know what I feel too.

The difference is that Lucien loves openly.

I love with restraint, with strategy, with the kind of patience that waits for the right moment.

I do not intend to step aside.

I do not intend to rush her either.

I will remain close, steady, present — the one who understands her shadows as well as her light. If her heart is a choice to be made, then I will be there when she realizes that safety is not always softness... sometimes it is the one who would burn the world to keep her untouched.

🍁🍁🍁

I grew up alongside the Vanserra brothers, in a court where beauty hides cruelty and nothing is ever simple. Lucien was always my safe place, the one who made me laugh, who treated me like I was something gentle in a harsh world.

Eris was different. Quiet, observant, intense. He watched more than he spoke, and when he looked at me, it felt like he saw far more than I was ready to show.

We were just children once.

Now we are adults tangled in feelings that should never have existed.

Lucien loves me with honesty.

Eris desires me with a dangerous kind of devotion.

And I am caught between two brothers, two versions of fire, knowing that choosing one may mean losing the other forever.