Lacmere University – Chapter 10 – A Librarian After Hours [NSFW, 9.9k Words]

'It is a cornerstone of this institution's traditions to cultivate the passions of the staff,' a tall, blonde woman who has no business existing outside of a magazine cover told me when she granted me…

The top room of a castle's tower.

I really shouldn't be distracted at this moment, but… The Campbell boy.

It shook me.

And so, my mind wanders.

It wanders through memories of two decades ago and all the nonsensical things I got into when I first became the guardian of a library out of the wildest dreams I ever had back in Germany, when Mom read to me from books adorned with ink engravings that depicted worlds of wonder in stark light and shadow.

When she taught me about faeries, and elves, and giants, and all the things that fill a child's imagination and an adult's fond memories.

That first love, that love for stories and wonder, accompanied me through my entire life. I first wanted to become a writer, to add even more treasures to the hoard for young minds to one day uncover, but… But I ended up just studying library sciences. A guardian rather than a maker.

Except for this one thing. This one single thing that sparks inside of me when I smell the air tinged by burning gas, powdered metal, ancient wood, and chemicals that I was first taught about by a man who came to me while he was a bright-eyed student and I struggled to remain professional.

Struggled and failed.

That outrageous fencing club and its collection of memorable misfits…

I take a look outside the window closed by diamond-shaped, colorful panes, and, even if distorted by the rippling waves and tiny bubbles trapped in the ancient glass, the moon shines brightly on me and…

My workshop.

The workshop granted to me by an infuriatingly cryptic woman who, somehow, just guessed that I would want to become a silversmith.

Ridiculous. Preposterous. Mom barely had any jewelry other than her wedding band, and I never developed the childish fascination for plastic adornments so many of my playmates decorated themselves with. There's nothing in my upbringing or personal tastes that would even point at a need to grab a spool of thin silver wire and tug a strand loose just to see moonlight playing over the unraveled mirror.

Nothing in the slightest.

I still open the window to let the cool autumn night in, along with a shaft of light that falls straight on top of my working space, somehow brighter than the flickering flames coming from the Old Sheffield Plate candleholders set at the corners, the set of rescued antiques so ancient that streaks of bronze bloom across the mirror-polished argent plating.

It… my heart speeds up, and I grab a thin band of silver already marked at the proper length, so I only have to take my chisel and hammer to cut through it in a single blow. Then I place it upon the tapered steel cylinder that is the ring mandrel secured to my desk and…

Hammer.

Just… blow after rhythmical blow, finding the melody of the metal thrumming up my tongs and fingers to join my speeding heartbeat as each fall of the tool bends the band along the curve of the cylinder at precisely the mark that would make it so that, with the final strike, the circle closes and something becomes complete.

I slide the new, rough ring out of the shaping tool and just… admire it. The way that Moon hides in the slight indentations where my blows were less than perfect, how it contrasts with my dusky skin that seemed to grow darker with every year that I spent in America until I had a daughter and I stopped noticing any changes other than what rambunctious little Gretchen and her scandalously young father kept bringing into my new life.

My little Pearl… yet another treasure for me to gush over.

I find myself smiling with inordinate fondness at the unfinished ring in my hand, and I fight the burst of private embarrassment as I set it down on a piece of black velvet that is more ceremonious than utilitarian as I go back to my spools of silver. I take the finest one and wrap two fingerbreadths of it around a piece of steel barely any thicker than the band of the ring before I cut the newly shaped spiral after a straight length of equal measure, then I do the same with two pieces of silver wire slightly broader than the first, except those I twist fully.

The next few steps are mostly routine: I brush the flux along the seam before I weld the band closed with silver solder, carefully tracing circles of flame over the ring with a propane blowtorch so that it heats evenly over the firebrick until the whole piece glows orange, then I drop it on a solution of water and baking soda to both cool it and rid it of any stains that could mar the pure silver.

Pure silver. Not sterling.

Yet another… eccentricity of my patron.

'Common sense would have you believe there's a reason why sterling is so favored. To other jewelers, common sense applies.'

I blank my face of the involved set of emotions that flare up at the memory of first being granted this workshop and how excessive it all was. I remember arguing, saying how little sense, common and otherwise, it made, but…

I also remember an ancient black hammer being thrust into my hand and my heart racing.

I stopped arguing shortly after.

The ring gleams wetly, drops of whitish water sliding off it and glittering in their fall as they pass through the shafts of moonlight traversing my workshop.

I barely breathe.

It's just… it's the kind of beauty I dreamed about when Mom told me about dragon hoards buried under ancient peaks. The kind of glimmer I would imagine adorning a princess or a queen. The light brought down to earth, a piece of the heavens for us to admire.

It almost pains me to dry it.

Then it's more routine: grinding away the edges and scratches, turning the band into a proper ring with soft curves that glide over skin before resting in their proper place. It looks almost finished in its simplicity, the soldered seam completely undistinguishable from the whole metal as it becomes that much-vaunted symbol of eternity any symbology primer will tell you about.

I am looking for simplicity, yes, but not plainness.

So there come the two thicker wires. I slide one ending over the band and corkscrew it around the whole ring until a loose spiral runs along it from beginning to end, with barely any overlap where the end and beginning meet. The next wire, I slide in the other direction so that the spirals twin around one another, weaving in and out wherever they whisper past their mirror.

Then, the thinner one.

That… takes a tad more finagling.

I first slide the right side around the three bands with the same corkscrewing motion until only the left half remains free and unattached, protruding straight from the back. I'm looking to have the straight part turn into another spiral, one that bends counterwise to the first half, twinning around the ring in the other direction, so I can't just wind it without undoing the work I already did. Instead, I affix the ring to the table, careful not to scratch it with the clamps cushioned with rawhide, and I use my thinnest prongs to twist one revolution after another of silver around silver as if I'm threading a needle, the malleable wire sealing in place the broader ones as it wraps over them, snaking its way to the middle of the ring where three wires meet over a spot undistinguishable from any other where I melted a band into a ring.

Then I take a deep breath tinged with the scent of ground silver, baking soda, and burning candles, and I undo the clamp, admiring the unfinished piece of jewelry before I wipe it away once again to make it shine.

I… I am tempted to leave it as it is. Just another unfinished project like dozens before. Something I didn't have the courage to complete and left to languish in imperfect beauty sharpened by my dreams of what would have been.

Sometimes, I wonder where the courageous young woman who left her country in her twenties went. I miss her.

I miss her enough to finish this ring.

There's a sheet of silver that is all but paper thin, and I scratch over it with a steel bur. Shapes so simple they are almost abstract, but they can be taken as the leaves of a silverleaf poplar.

One bears the engraving of an open book, so tiny you could fool yourself into thinking the scrawled lines have words in them.

The other?

An upside-down saber's guard, ready to be drawn.

What else?

It takes me another long moment of fond contemplation before I cut the shapes away from the sheet and round the edges with a quick pass on the grinder, then it's back to fire and round, even passes. A few strikes of my rawhide mallet flatten the coils somewhat with no risk of scratching, binding wire to solid band before I place the two leaves to frame the meeting of spirals at the center. With my prongs, I tease them open, six peaks around an empty, blank space that I could chisel my brand into.

But that's not what they are for: the opening is waiting for a gemstone around which to curl the silver threads. The piece that will finally complete this ring I've dreamed about for months and only decided to do today after seeing yet another member of that accursed club seduce an employee of my library.

Traditions. Who says the New World doesn't have its own share?

I certainly have enough of them.

Enough to look at the all-but-finished ring, the almost flawless work of artisanry I shouldn't be suited for, and think of all the things I could fit where common sense would demand a diamond.

That's… that's not what my dreams demand.

I want the roots of a mountain. The steps of a cat. The nerves of a bear. I want the whisper of autumn in the forest, and the dawning of winter with a promise of spring. I want things ephemeral and eternal.

I want the impossible.

And so, I have nothing.

━❖━

I look younger than I am, but, still, I don't relish the walk down the spiral stairs of my workshop tower.

Stone ancient and worn away doesn't creak at my passing, but my knees do at some points, and I ponder the wisdom of learning some of those exercises the father of my daughter insists I join him in.

Except, knowing us—well, knowing me—not much exercise would be accomplished.

Let's just say I remember very vividly when and how Gretchen was conceived.

Fencing tights are… form-fitting.

It is a relief when I step into the landing that will take me along the wall toward the wing of the castle where most teachers reside, a somewhat modernized addition to the old design that fits very much with childhood memories of German hotels fashioned out of historical sites.

I… I should take Gretchen to visit her grandparents this year. They were very disappointed that she didn't come last time, but, well, the girl had just started college, and she deserved some time to herself without having to meet either her mother, the librarian, or her father, the teacher of material sciences.

I still wonder how she ended up on the road to becoming an engineer. As a child, she seemed as entranced by my childhood books as I ever was, and Mom used to joke that I was raising my own replacement, but nowadays, she can't bother with anything that isn't on graph paper, and…

And I have an unfinished ring in my purse.

I wet my lips while I look at the dark, ornately carved wood that leads to my quasi-apartment, a place that became far more uncomfortably spacious when my little girl moved into the dorms and pretended she wasn't the closest thing to a nepo baby that Lacmere would ever deign to enroll.

A place that used to be for three, and is now just…

What it became when I was shocked to discover I wasn't going to get fired.

'My dear Minna, if I suspected an actual abuse of your position, you wouldn't even make it to court, but, as things stand? If I had to fire every member of my staff that got carried away by the ambiance of a castle in the middle of lush greenery, we wouldn't get anything done around these parts.'

Sometimes, I don't know whether to hate or love my boss—unlike her secretary, who seems to be firmly on one side of that dilemma.

Still, luckily for my boyfriend and father of my daughter…

Here we are.

I take my keys rather than unfinished jewelry out of my purse, and I open the ancient oak door to greet the love of my life with…

Exasperation.

Apparently.

"Minna Eisenberg, will you do me the honor to marry me?" he says, on one knee, with both arms outstretched and surrounded by votive candles arrayed into a heart's shape in the middle of what amounts to our living room.

There's even a carpet of rose petals.

I can already feel the beginnings of a migraine.

"We have a daughter," I, hopefully unnecessarily, remind him.

"Gasp! You mean I've made you live in sin? We must correct this travesty at once!" he says, clutching at his chest.

Or, well, at the chest of his tuxedo.

"You look ridiculous," I say as I pretend not to feel a rush of tingling heat across both my cheeks and ears while I disinterestedly close the door behind me.

"And you look positively ravishing."

"Ravishing? Jumping straight to the wedding night, are we?"

"Well, we did sire a bastard together—"

"Call Gretchen that again. See what happens."

"You're just sore because she takes after me in—"

"She's only in her second year. Plenty of time for her to come back to her senses."

"She's acing all her classes and on the track to getting a masters in a career that doesn't require moving halfway across the globe—"

"Can you please stand? It's very hard for me to take you seriously while you're doing… that," I say, gesturing at him with the arm still inside my jacket's sleeve as I try not to look half as foolish as he does while struggling not to strangle myself with my purse's strap.

He blinks at me in affected innocence and looks down at the spread of candles and rose petals that he will be vacuuming before breakfast, then he snaps his fingers as if suddenly realizing something in the most insincere display I've witnessed from him since…

…

Fine. I can't even call it insincere. That's why it's so frustrating.

Particularly when his look of confusion turns into a confident smile, and he reaches behind to proffer a single bundle of forget-me-nots.

My jacket falls to the floor, thankfully cushioning the swiftly following purse.

I'm hiding my mouth with both cupped hands.

And… And…

It's just…

'You were close to the due date with this one,' I told a tall, lanky boy with light brown hair and slender arms that I had found myself eyeing more than it was appropriate for the newly appointed librarian to do.

'It… took longer than I thought it would,' he said with a nervous smile, his eyes never wavering from mine even if I was wearing a dress that showed a tad more than a hint of cleavage for reasons I still denied myself at the time.

'Enthralling reading material, I take it?' I said just for the sake of making conversation with one of the few students who didn't joke about the Fuhrer of the Library, because quips about German accents and positions of authority didn't seem to spark the joy of creativity.

'Just… something to be in the mood for?'

His cadence sounded awkward, and I raised an inquiring eyebrow as he handed back to me one of those ancient books on swordplay that so many of his fellow club members seemed to check out, even if only for novelty's sake. This one was leatherbound, ivory cracks blooming across deep brown along the worn spine, but I barely paid any mind to the sensual susurrus of my fingertips gliding along the recesses of the cover as I opened it to check for…

A pressed blue flower with five petals and a bright starburst of white and gold in its middle.

I stared at it, uncomprehending, and he fidgeted nervously.

Shyly.

'It's a forget-me-not,' he finally blurted out, turning in place to flee from the counter.

But there was a hand grabbing his sleeve.

I surprised myself to discover it was my own hand.

The kiss that followed shocked both of us.

"You unbelievably sappy man," I say, trying not to cry, back in the moment, still covering my mouth, looking at the man I love reminding me of how our life together started.

He finally stands, stepping over the boundary of the heart of candleflame to stand in front of me, one hand offering the subdued bouquet and the other cradling my cheek to make me look up at him and…

The years darkened his hair somewhat, before strands of silver bloomed across it. Lines of expression surround eyes still as innocent as they were in those days, when he was shocked to discover that women have their own desires, but he's still so much taller and stronger than I am…

He's… no longer lanky, though. His shoulders broadened with age and training, and his skin no longer clings so tightly to his frame.

He's… aged. As much as I have, even if I don't show it. Even if he remains the same naïve, playful man that I fell so hard for.

"I love you, Minna Eisenberg. And I always will," he says, making me believe him like he has ever since he managed to blurt out a rushed confession while still pulled halfway over a counter cluttered by late returns in the corner of a thankfully deserted library.

"I love you, Clement," I say, taking away my trembling hands from my face to cup his before I draw him down into a kiss that is not as passionate as our first one, but that is… deeper. "I always will."

The last three words are a whisper ghosting between our close lips, shaped by shared, slight smiles that we don't need to see to recognize in one another's tone, not after hearing them so many times in the dark of night, under the colored moonlight falling over our bed from panes of glass as ancient as the stones of this castle.

Not after sharing them so many times, even when we blearily woke to the loudly healthy lungs of a redheaded child who needed to be changed, fed, or just reassured that her parents were still at her beck and call.

'I love you,' he would say, slipping back into bed.

'I love you,' I would answer, immediately wrapping myself around his warmth as he shrieked at my cold feet burrowing between his until we both chuckled as he made me beg for his forgiveness.

And that could be it. The whole of it.

A shared 'I love you,' another reassurance that this will last even if there are not, and never will be, any official papers stating that our promise will endure. Even if I didn't marry him when he first asked, and I reminded him that there was something far more binding growing in my belly.

That… wasn't it. Not really.

Mom married Dad, and Dad took her name.

It's not that unusual in Germany. Foreigners who take their German wives' names just to make life slightly easier, to make business run smoother. A Turkish man with a surname no one can dispute the roots of.

It never sat right.

There's… a part of me that just rebels against the notion. The idea that somebody else could decide that my love is valid, that I need the approval and signature of a clerk for my daughter to be anything other than perfect.

There's also a… fear. Something I can't understand or put into words. Something that tells me that saying 'I do' would change things irrevocably.

I don't want things to change. I want my perfect life with my perfect daughter and my perfect not-husband.

And so, he proposes, and I refuse.

Constantly.

One of his frustratingly endearing quirks. One of the profusions of love and commitment that I can't begrudge him, even if they should frustrate me to no end, but he always manages to melt my heart, make me laugh, or both at once.

… I've been staring at him for too long.

"You're adorable," he whispers as his fingers brush behind my ear a few strands of hair that have come loose from my braid at some point while I bashfully try to find anything remotely interesting in the flagstones bare of our usual carpet and filled with too many rose petals for this not to have been expensive enough that I could berate him at the extravagant expense, only for him to laugh at me and ask me if I'm ever going to sell any of the silver trinkets I keep toiling away at, and…

And now I'm rambling.

Inside of my head.

Which, somehow, makes it even worse.

"You enjoy teasing me far too much," I manage to mumble despite the thrill that he sends down my nape with another brush of his fingers over the now ticklish tip of my ear.

"Perks of the single life: I get to tease ravishing women."

I glare at him.

He, thankfully, stops playing with my hair long enough to make a placating gesture with both hands.

"I swear, one of us getting involved with the student body was more than enough," I mutter, only for him to look affronted.

"I would never—"

"I know, you… dummy."

And, yet again, I'm looking up at him.

His hair darkened and streaked with silver, his skin wrinkled, his smooth forehead creased with age and worry.

But his eyes…

The eyes are the same.

He is the same.

And so, I find myself once again on my tiptoes, my hands clasping the lapels of his ridiculous tuxedo just to pull myself a bit higher so that I can brush my lips against his. So that I can reassure myself that he's here and mine, more of a treasure than anything I could find in the pages of old, engraved books or in the discarded drawers of my workshop.

Mine.

My treasure.

Forever more.

That's what fairy tales taught me, after all.

"Minna…" he whispers.

"Carry me," I demand like a capricious little princess, only for his arms to sweep me off my feet before I even notice he's moved, because he may be decades away from his prime, but he still was that club's prodigy, second only to that mentor of his that I was very reassured to see spend so much time with the Campbell boy.

He still moves in ways I can't appreciate other than with wonder and awe.

Just like a fairy tale treasure.

"You're still so light…" he whispers with something close to fear.

"Flattery will not get you… anything other than what you already have," I say, knowing that I'm blushing like a schoolgirl, unbecoming of even the age I met him at.

I used to be so brave. So decisive.

And now I am… his.

I nuzzle against his chest, the cool satin of the lapel flowing under my cheek as my braid drapes over his elbow, and his steps are soft and measured as he carries me to our bedroom, where I'm sure yet another surprise that should make me roll my eyes at him waits to complete this latest proposal of his.

I, of course, am far from disappointed.

"How?" I ask, looking away from his chest just to watch as the shelves around the four walls of our bedroom, usually filled with our collection of knickknacks and more than a few pieces of early attempts at a child's idea of engineering, are now glowing with shifting, phantasmal light coming from the empty candleholders he got in our latest trip to one of Seattle's flea markets, where, once again, he didn't find a sword worth buying.

"Radioactive glass," he says with a smug tone that almost makes me slap his chest out of sheer reflex.

"That explains nothing."

"See? Maybe if you made an effort to share your daughter's hobbies—"

"Clement."

"Fine, fine! It's… Uranium had been used to color glass for centuries before radioactivity was discovered, and, of course, there was that period where radioactive everything was in fashion, so…"

"So… Should I be worried?" I ask, knowing that no, I shouldn't, but it's still the natural question to ask when your not-husband fills your bedroom with radioactive anything-at-all.

"Not really. They are about as radioactive as a single banana, but! The thing is, if you hit the glass with enough energy, it becomes fluorescent, and I had a few ultraviolet LEDs lying around, so… snap your fingers?"

I look up at him as doubtfully as I can manage while still being held in his arms, and…

Well.

I snap my fingers.

Obviously.

Immediately, the overhead lamp dims down to a violet shade that reminds me of the night in old-time movies, and the green candlesticks shift in hues and radiance, brightening or darkening to the tune of the wind sweeping across the room from his hidden speakers as my eyes are drawn to the ceiling and the luminescent night sky he's painted above our bed without me noticing until this very moment.

"It's been a long time since we went camping," he says, as if that explains anything at all.

I wrap my arms around his neck, pull him down into a searing kiss, and he loses his balance, both of us falling to our bed.

We bounce on the old mattress, springs and wooden boards creaking in protest even as I silence my husband in the most effective way I've ever found to do such a thing.

He tastes… he tastes like a sandwich eaten away while in the middle of work he was too abstracted by to get himself a proper meal, and I fight a flash of guilt for sequestering myself in the tower for long enough that I recognize his usual, hurried ham and cheese, but that just makes me even more determined to repay him.

To make him feel as loved as he is. As he makes me.

By the time I'm done with the buttons of his jacket and halfway down his shirt, he looks down at me in blinking surprise that I answer with a feral grin, precisely the same kind of grin that he first witnessed among library shelves, and I'm already pulling the white shirt out of his pants even as I shift my hips and thighs under him, trying to make my dress ride high enough for me to wrap my legs around his hips and stop him from ever escaping me.

Except we're no longer in our twenties, and this is far from our first time.

So his hands possessively grab my waist, and he drags me down the bed's red comforter as he sits on his haunches, with my ass on his thighs and something hard running down his pants and pressed against my flesh as he makes a show out of taking off his jacket for me, a hint of sweat making the top of his shirt transparent enough where it sticks to his chest to let me admire the muscles below.

He picks up where I left off, and the buttons of his shirt are methodically, tortuously undone, more and more of his body bare to my eyes before he raises his hands and tugs at the black bowtie—

"No," I whisper about as heatedly as I've ever told him anything with my hand clasped around his wrist, only for him to once again look at me in surprise that, too quickly for my tastes, turns into a satisfied smirk.

"Oh? Should I quote Bond—"

"Don't even. Just… Just leave the bowtie on," I say, embarrassment warring with desire like it so often has in my shared life with this awkwardly honest misfit.

Then he, of course, does one of those things he does: he grabs the hand I'm holding him with and turns it around so that he can lay a single, chaste, courteous kiss on the back of it that makes my cheeks tingle in all the right and wrong ways as the half-naked father of my daughter looks at my wantonly disheveled self.

He resumes the show he's putting on for me, white, immaculately pressed and starched sleeves all but gliding down his arms, the arms that are now hairier and thicker, no longer as well-defined, blue veins barely standing out on the inside of his forearms, but that doesn't matter half as much as the way that his callouses slowly faded from lack of practice until I found myself able to remember how his hands once felt on my body, comparing his earlier touch with the present one.

It didn't really change that much. Not with how… how embarrassingly gentle he always is with me unless I ask him not to be.

But… now it's me who has callouses.

From grabbing different hammers and chisels, working with a bur, getting burned more than once when working with molten or incandescent metal… My hands are far from free of any blemishes, and…

And I still dare run them up his bare torso, tracing every flawless contour, the shape of the man who captured me with kindness and a guileless smile that it took me years to teach mischief to.

I almost feel guilty about it.

About a lot of things.

But…

"You are still the only one, you know?" he says, grabbing my hand once again when it reaches his chest, just to kiss the tips of my fingers and whisper loving words over them.

"You… You don't have to remind me," I say despite my burning face and the rush of my heart at seeing those eyes of his look at me the way I think no fairy tale princess has ever been looked at.

"No. But I want to," he says.

And, before I can answer, his hands shift me on top of his thighs, and I barely notice my panties being pushed aside before he enters me.

I gasp, shocked at how ready I am for him, how easy it is for him to reach deep inside of me until my eyelids flutter and the painted moon above our bed blurs with something unshed that is as far from sadness as night from day.

Even if it is manufactured night.

The green ghost lights of radioactive candleholders shimmer all around us, casting his shadow to dance along the shelf behind him, old toys and broken pieces of ceramics becoming something mysterious and other to the tune of a windswept mountaintop, and his hands clench around my waist, giving me his warmth to fight off the phantom of the cold we would've found if we had gone camping tonight and he had taken me under a moon and stars that he hadn't painted on our ceiling.

I grab his bare wrists, his tendons under my fingers, thrumming with all the power I know he still holds in these arms of his that age may have dulled, but hasn't stolen.

Mine. My treasure. Nobody can take him from me.

"Minna," he says in that possessive tone that I didn't have to teach him, with the very same word with which he finally stole me away from whatever life I could've led before meeting him.

"Clement," I answer with the sheer need of him.

And so, he fulfills it.

A single thrust of his hips nearly sends me flying away from the bunched comforter, and I hold onto him as tightly as I can, surrounding his bare waist with my legs, locking them behind his toned back, feeling the sinuous movement of his muscles on my skin when he pulls out of me despite my body crying out for him to remain, to fill the gaping void that didn't exist until he pried me open and forced me to realize anew how much I want him, need him, crave him, love him.

"Minna…" he whispers, beads of sweat shimmering with trembling green light that sets his eyes ablaze with the phantoms of a thousand nights spent with him inside of me, his hands on my body, his tongue on my skin.

"Take me," I beg him, "all of me."

His eyes shoot for a single moment to my left hand, where there's no ring to mark me as his.

I close mine.

Then, in the private darkness I have retreated to, I…

I let his presence bloom.

The hard shaft pressing against my walls, just on the verge of becoming uncomfortable with every beat of his heart that thrums along with mine. The taut, thick muscle of his thighs under my ass and back. His hands on my waist, pressure and heat shooting right past the barely-there barrier of a black dress I will have to send to the cleaners.

And his scent.

The sweat of work and sport, thickened with sex and passion. The mild fragrance that I know comes not from his soap, but from his skin. The metallic scent that always clings to him after all these years of working in the material sciences lab. The whole history of an innocent student who became a grown man and father of one encoded in my memory of how his smell changed along with the callouses of his hands.

He's warm, soft, and hard all at once. Overwhelming and gentle as he ever was.

So I trace my hands up from his wrists, along arms coarser than they once were, shoulders that bear the slight blemishes of aged skin that burned once too many under the mountain sun when we took our little girl to swim in the lake by my workplace.

His neck, long and elegant, muscles taut and pulsing under the pads of my fingers.

The smooth line of his shaven jaw.

His open lips. The tender skin under his eyes.

I open mine.

He's still staring at me with aching wonder. With that thing I will never believe I'm worthy of, not from him, not like this, with such an honest intensity.

"I am yours," I force myself to say. "Clement, I—"

He doesn't let me finish.

His tongue is inside of my mouth, pressing mine down, making me moan around the obstruction as my nipples hurt against the confines of my bra, but I can't even focus on that as his hands snake under my back and pull me up so that we're both sitting in our bed, in the middle of a twisted red comforter, beneath a fake moon and stars that glow down on us with light less colored than what comes from our ancient window.

He slides his left hand down my spine, and I struggle to mewl at his touch when he presses right on top of that oh-so-sensitive spot at the top of my lower back. I inhale as deeply as I can through my nose, but that only makes my breasts flatten harder against his unyielding chest, and sparks shoot behind my eyelids when he thrusts inside of me from beneath me, lifting my entire body, making me bounce atop him, making my nipples drag across his exposed skin in a way that my dress and bra don't shield me from.

I know he won't stop. It doesn't matter if I go limp in his arms or tighten mine around his neck: as long as he senses that I want him, he'll keep going, he'll keep…

Making love to me.

I don't think he's ever fucked me.

So, the least I can do is to reciprocate. To tease at his short hair, brush my fingers along the trails over his temples where silver blooms brighter. To kiss him back with lips and tongue devoted to show him that, whatever it is that he feels for me, I will always answer to it.

I will always give him back as much as I am able to. As much as I have.

I help him bounce me on top of my member, my thighs straining to do much of anything while also firmly locked around him, and, as if to highlight my struggle, the fake wind roars, the empty candleholders tremble, and I feel like howling my pleasure, my need…

My happiness.

It only comes out as a muffled, needy sound that barely makes it past our joined lips, but I open my eyes to find him watching me, studying each and every one of my reactions to his touch.

I push him.

He's surprised to fall back, and I almost blank out at the unexpected jolt of pure sensation that comes through me when his cock jolts inside of me because of our springy mattress, but I manage to get my hands on his chest and push myself away from him, just enough to breath, to feel the scalding air coming from his mouth washing over my lips like a continuation of our kiss.

It's almost impossible to slow down, to just grind myself on top of him, pressing the apex of my sex against the hard protrusion of bone above his shaft, my whole body shuddering despite myself as I do my best to align him inside of me before I straighten up and sit on top of him, with his erect cock keeping me ramrod straight.

Then I gasp and look down at him, at this beautiful man looking up at me with such wonder that…

…

I think I can afford a new dress.

"Minna?" he asks with wide-eyed confusion as I reach up to the seam running along my left armpit and tear, the sound of thread coming undone matched by the breeze now coming from his hidden speakers.

A flap of black cotton falls down in a diagonal that covers my right breast and exposes the left one, even if my bra is still in the way until I slip a finger under the joining of the two cups and pull it up, the stiff fabric uncomfortably bunched on top of my heaving tit, framing my tanned skin with scrunched lace and cascading fabric.

His eyes are wide enough that I could laugh if I wasn't too busy trying not to moan, and I bend back down to kiss him clumsily enough to slather his shaven chin with my saliva before I grab the back of his head and pull him toward my aching nipple, the satin band of his bowtie a tempting handhold that I abstain from.

As soon as his tongue teases the hard flesh, I scream.

And keep screaming.

The bed creaks as my hips fall up and down on top of his hard body, his cock rubs against every single spot inside of me that makes me want to curl around him and never let him go, and his tongue makes the sparks that shoot inside my head rival the brightness of fake stars and real radioactivity.

"Gods, I love you," I say in a heated, blasphemous breath.

He doesn't answer other than by grabbing my ass, his strong fingers sinking in my flesh, pulling me down, forcing me to take all of him down to the very base until I'm once again grinding my clitoris on top of his pubic bone and I beg a litany of promises into his ear as I lose whatever remains of my mind.

"Minna, I'm going to—"

"Inside! Inside of me! Please! I need you, Clement!"

He twists his head free of my breast, and I whine in protest before he's suddenly right in front of me, his eyes blazing with that thrillingly familiar intensity, that thing that makes me feel belonged.

His.

Then he leans forward, his lips close for a brief second on the side of my neck, past the errant strands of hair that keep escaping from my braid whenever my not-husband makes love to me, and, after that achingly fleeting kiss, he whispers right in my ear:

"You're so beautiful when you lie…"

I shake my head to protest, my braid flailing behind me as I struggle to tell him that it's never been a lie, that he took my world and turned it into things I could have only dreamed about. That every single treasure I have is because of him and his painfully honest eyes.

He grabs the base of my braid, pulls, and they are once again in front of me, unchanged despite the decades of fatherhood, life, and love.

I… There's so much I still have to tell him, even if it's only a pale rephrasing of everything I've already shared with him.

Lived with him.

But his eyes blaze with the hunger to fill me, and I can't do anything but mutely accept him.

He thrusts once again, hard enough that my weight shifts onto my knees and the hands on his chest, and he keeps me right there by moving his hips so fast I can't fall back down as his cock tears my mind open until there's only him, beneath me on a red comforter, surrounded by a halo of green, shimmering light as recorded wind blows all around us.

Then he stops for a single moment, and I fall, hilting him fully inside of me as he clenches his teeth and shudders right before molten heat makes me finally complete, full in a way I never am without my not-husband by my side.

I try to keep my eyes open and admire his pleasure, drink this beautiful man in as he succumbs to his need for me, but… I am not strong enough to hold on as he pushes me past the brink, making me fall on top of him with trembling arms wrapped around his naked torso as I bite down on his bowtie so that I won't scream when the next rope of scalding seed brands my insides.

I don't even notice the third one, or if there is one, I just let myself be carried away by the peak of a climax that he holds me through, strong arms claiming me and keeping me together as my mind unravels at the crash of pleasure and the blank, tired thoughts that follow.

His cock pulses once again inside of me, and it takes me an astonished moment to realize that, no, he isn't going to fill me any more than he already has, that he's just… deflating.

Thankfully.

I don't think I could go for another round. Not with how… intense today has been.

Then, after a shared silence of desperate breaths and artificial wind, he… snaps his fingers.

And the wind stops.

"You're so dramatic," I tell him without any heat to spare for a tone that should be, at the very least, mildly mocking.

"You inspire me," he says with a bright smile that I don't see but hear clearly enough.

Seconds of silence stretch, punctuated by the still flickering green lights that cast everything in penumbra rather than detail, and it takes me far too long to realize that my cheeks ache because I, too, am smiling brightly enough that I should be embarrassed by it.

Except I'm resting on top of his chest, above his beating heart, and…

There's no room for embarrassment here. Not with him.

There's also no room for lies.

"I need you," I insist.

"You don't, Minna. I'm lucky to have you, but you—"

"Clement. Stop."

He's too honest. Too humble. Too much of a lot of things that should be virtues, but that they aren't when they hurt the man I love.

So I…

I wet my lips, more nervous than I was even when I went off birth control for something planned yet still scarier than moving from one continent to another in search of the library of my childhood dreams.

This… This isn't planned.

Even if it feels like it.

I push myself up with my hands on his chest, except this time he wetly slides out of me rather than as far as possible inside of me, but the look in his eyes is still one of wonder even as he gazes up at me.

At the woman with a torn dress, out-of-place bra, messy braid, and sweaty skin.

I am no vision of beauty, but, to him…

I shake my head, my braid trailing behind me at the movement slower than before, and, for the first time since we started, I realize that I'm still wearing my pince-nez, the tiny glasses almost dislodged at the strength of my mute denial before I force myself to stand up and get out of our bed so I can get to the window of our bedroom and open it, letting unfiltered moonlight in to wash over my half-naked lover and his bitten bowtie.

"Give me… give me a moment," I say, knowing that he will.

Then I take a deep breath of air cooler than the heated, cloying haze filling the room, and…

There's a black and white ink engraving hanging over the head of our bed, Arthur Rackham's vision of The Little Mermaid.

It was… far from my favorite. I loved Andersen's tale, but Rackham has such intricate, beautiful works that this one, with the mermaid floating along cresting waves crafted more out of blank space than detailed line and crosshatched shade…

It's not my favorite.

It still seemed like the only one I could hang in my bedroom when I came to Lacmere and found this old, framed copy in a Seattle flea market.

Something tightens in my chest at the moment of silent contemplation, even as Clement keeps staring at me, waiting for me to do… something.

I don't know what.

I only know that the mermaid never married her prince.

It's… it's just that stupid, isn't it? A voice bargained in exchange of legs, one treasure for another. But she didn't get the one she wanted.

Except, when she refused to kill her love, when she denied her sisters' request that she stab the prince so that she could return to the ocean, to her home…

She, instead, decided to die. To turn into seafoam.

But her decision didn't matter because, at that very moment when she would have faded away, turned to nothing, she was instead granted the chance to gain an immortal soul.

I never wanted anyone to decide anything for me.

So I once again lick my lips and leave my bedroom to go past a heart made out of extinguished candles and a carpet of red rose petals that one infuriatingly beautiful man will have to vacuum before breakfast, so long as I…

My purse lies open on top of my jacket, a bright ring rolled just past the mouth of it.

Blood races, and the hammer of my pulse beats in my ears.

I pick the piece of tooled silver up, colder than the air around me, the incomplete thing with six open wires waiting for the crowning gemstone that I couldn't settle on because it has to be impossible, a treasure more precious than a knife bought with mermaid's hair.

It's just that, at this very moment, I have it.

I have had it for two decades.

I walk back to him on unsteady feet, carried by something other than my will as I finally get on my knees on top of our scrunched red comforter, beneath a fake moon, under the pale rays of the real one, surrounded by the green ghosts of candlesticks lit by invisible light.

My lips feel dry once again, my rapid breathing doing me no favors, but…

Moonlight shines on polished silver surrounded by three coiled wires that hold two leaves branded with a book and a saber.

His eyes still shine brighter than the ring.

"I… I can't marry you," I finally confess after years of something I couldn't put into words. "I know that… I want it, Clement. I want you. Forever. And that's… because I want forever, I can't marry you now."

He sits up, his hands cupped around mine, beneath the ring I hold toward him.

The unfinished ring.

His eyes ask me for permission, and I nod, too shaken to word my answer.

"It doesn't have to be forever, Minna. Until death do us part, remember?"

I deny him silently, and…

I see it.

Growing old, side by side, bickering without an ounce of acridness about our days living in a fairytale castle. Gretchen coming by to visit, introducing us to the next little girl to grow up with wonders made of black ink that we would spoil with gifts of silver, paper, and craft.

Fading away.

Strength leaving his toned arms. Skin loosening further around his bright eyes. The sharp mind of a duelist dulling with years and years of happy memories.

Caresses and reassuring sweet nothings exchanged every night even as the years grow shorter and shorter, and the hints of the end come by.

I want it.

A lifetime.

I just… want something else even more.

So I… I cry. I mourn the life that would've been, and celebrate the love I have. The years that I have spent with him and our daughter in this enchanted place whose magic I refused to acknowledge until this night of a full moon in which he has, once again, proposed to me.

I could've said yes.

I always could have.

I, instead, let a single tear fall on top of an open ring, the round, glimmering droplet shining with the silver that surrounds it and the moonlight cast upon it.

It… blooms.

Waiting silver wires close around my tear, surrounding it like ivy tendrils sprouting roots thinner than a hair's breadth, the three spirals beating to an unsung melody as my tear diminishes and the silverleaves curl at the edges, gaining a green vibrancy along the veins I carved in them and the symbols they hold.

My hand moves without me meaning to, sliding out of Clement's, and I take his ring finger and slide the band over it just in time for Moon to shine brighter, my tear to fade, and a five-petaled, argent flower to bloom in its place.

A forget-me-not.

Once again, hopefully for the last time tonight, I wet my dry lips.

"Clement… Clement Lemoine, will you do me the honor of becoming my husband?" I say, more fearful than I have ever felt.

I used to be braver.

I wish I would be again.

But, against my wishes, I anxiously watch my not-husband look at the magic in his finger and…

He doesn't recoil.

He, instead, clasps my hand between his so that I can feel the thrumming something still beating in my finally finished piece.

"We could still have… that. A normal life. If you want it," he tells me.

I shake my head.

A bitter smile flits past his lips, but it doesn't last when he looks down at the magic flower bloomed out of silver, and…

"Yes, I do," he says.

The world changes.

Magic is a lot of things. It's the lost voice of a mermaid, a chain forged out of things that don't exist, or a curse that can only be broken by the pure-hearted.

But, in this case, and in so many others…

It's true love.

So my old life ends with a kiss with my husband, and the new one begins when our lips part, and I witness the skin around his eyes straightening, free of the blemishes of age, as radiant as the first day he walked into my library carrying with him a light that the tall windows of my cathedral of books could never hope to compete with.

His hands smooth around mine, with no callouses or the wrinkles that only now do I notice as they fade away from a life that will never be as it would have been if I had been the one to promise myself to him.

Because… It's taken me this long.

But I finally understand.

"You knew," I tell him. "All this time, you knew."

"Of course I did. How could somebody like you exist without magic?" he answers, endearingly obtuse even as…

As my back straightens, the subtle hunch developed over the years bent over desks disappearing as my skin flushes beyond a tan and grows duskier, the light filling the room becoming more even as penumbra turns into a comforting darkness that I could easily read in and moonlight turns into something I could forge, a song I could pour over my anvil or into my kiln.

The tips of my ears tingle uncomfortably, and I feel them changing as I breathe something other than air. Something heady and intoxicating.

Intoxicating enough that I fall unconscious.

━❖━

Birdsong and the chill of morning find me curled on top of my husband's bare chest.

"You could've closed the damn window," I mumble without moving an inch away from him.

"I was too busy looking at you," he tells me in what should be an insincere, mocking rejoinder.

It never is.

"You're still vacuuming the rose petals," I say, drowsily awed at how I am lucid enough to remember that much.

"I can't even rest after my wedding night?"

I take a moment to blindly grope around his arm until I get to his hand and trace the shape of a forget-me-not that remains warmer than silver should be before I gather enough strength to crane my head up and finally open my eyes to look at him.

Of course, he's looking back at me.

Beautiful.

Smooth skin, free of any wrinkles or mars, hair as fair as when I first met him, even if streaks of silver still trace gentle waves over his ears.

… He's still wearing his bowtie.

"Isn't that… uncomfortable?" I ask him, tracing the wrinkled band of satin that I impulsively bit down on.

"A small price to pay," he says with a gentle smile as he makes me purr by caressing my hair before he pulls a single strand loose, and I…

"I never had a single white hair before," I tell him, immediately pulling on my braid to check how much of my natural coal black remains.

"You're married to me. It's a wonder it took this long."

I snort, undignified and happier than I should feel as I explore the changes in my body after…

After doing magic.

For the first time.

My hair seems to have remained mostly as it was, except for the single streak of silver that he's pinching with fingers as agile as they were in his newfound prime, and my ears feel prickly pointy where they tingled before I fell asleep. My skin is much darker, almost unnaturally so with its new hue, and…

And I'm still wearing my glasses.

Despite sleeping on top of him all night.

Somehow.

… I'll chalk it up to magic.

"You're as beautiful as ever," he reassures me, misinterpreting my frown.

"You're still vacuuming the petals," I tell him, slightly shifting my frown.

He chuckles, his toned chest rumbling beneath me, shaking me with his quiet joy, making me feel like the world is changing once again, as deeply as it did when silver bloomed.

I could join him in this laughter, but…

"What about Gretchen?" I ask him with a quiet voice that is not as brave as it should be after I've finally taken this step I should've years ago.

"She will find her way," he says with that unshakeable faith of his I never quite understood.

"Just like I did?"

He doesn't answer.

I worry at my lower lip before I crane my head upward, pushing myself on my elbows to look down at his serious eyes.

"Clement…" I beg him.

"She will. Trust her."

"I barely trust myself. And you… you didn't… you could've told me about this years ago."

"I could have."

"Why—"

"Because… whatever happened, it had to come from you. It's your life, your path—"

I take his hand and turn it around, showing him the forget-me-not that he gave me and I that returned to him in the most roundabout manner possible.

"It's our life. We should have… could have…" My words drift away as he slowly shakes his head.

"I know a bit more of magic than you do, Minna. Even if I wasn't born to it."

"Then teach me. Tell me why you didn't—"

His hand covers my mouth, and I'm tempted to kiss him or bite him even as his eyes narrow in amusement.

Then he leans up to kiss my brow, and I melt once again on top of this beautiful man who may not be as honest as I always thought.

"I could only hope," he whispers into my newly streaked hair. "I… I loved what you were and what you could be. I would have been happy to have a mortal's life, away from Lacmere, but… but I also learned my destiny when I met you."

"Destiny?" I ask with a tone that straddles the line between hope and fear.

"I always knew that, one day, I would be stolen away by the fae."

━❖━

In front of me, there are the tall, double doors that lead to the dean's office.

"She's been waiting for you," the green-haired secretary says.

"For years, I take it?" I snipe at her.

The apparently young woman who already worked here when I first joined the staff smiles.

The gates swing open.

And, in front of me, a tall blonde woman stands by the side of her oak desk, studying all of my unfinished treasures as they rest on top of a piece of black velvet.

Magic.

It can be a lot of things.

And I'm about to learn about quite a few of them.

━❖━⧫━❖━

So, here it is, yet another reason for Future Brian to make Future Roberta scream.

Other than waking up half-naked in the middle of a forest with a boy cuddling her from behind, I mean.

Anyway! The next chapter (https://www.patreon.com/posts/lacmere-chapter-122317673?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link) is a bit of an aside about a character I can't talk too much about without spoiling things. It's a shortish one, about 3k words, but I should get back to this in two weeks. Wish me luck!

As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xanah. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!