Genevieve shifted on the chaise with deliberate ease, wings still half-unfurled behind her like a warning draped in light. The soft glow of the fireplace danced across her bare skin, highlighting faint sigils that shimmered beneath the surface—runic inheritance from her cursed lineage. She stretched one leg toward the hearth, toes pointed like a ballerina in a silent ballet of power, then flicked her heel playfully. "You know," she said, voice thick with amusement and a grin that curled like a secret, "everyone still thinks you're a vampire."
She fluttered her wings slightly, scattering a shimmer of fae dust into the firelight like she was seasoning the moment with mischief.
Viktor didn't respond at first. He kept sketching—not because he was still interested in the drawing, but because it gave his hands something to do. Something other than tightening into fists.
"Do they?" he finally muttered.
He never corrected them. Let them believe he was a vampire. It came with a seductive kind of safety. Vampires, after all, were a class-two monster in most supernatural registries—romanticized, understood, even adored. There were rules for dealing with vampires. Folk tales. History. Sympathy. But dragons? Dragons weren't tragic. They were warnings.
In most classifications, monsters were ranked by how human they could pretend to be. Vampires could blend, seduce, rule quietly. Dragons couldn't. They burned through masks. They hoarded, remembered, and devoured what dared to forget them. Viktor had always passed as the former—brooding, dark, sharp—but that was misdirection. He had scales under his skin. Blood like magma. He slept on memory. He woke up hungry.
In the oldest regions, especially among the Eastern families, his bloodline linked him to the Russian Zmey—the three-headed serpent-dragon whose fire was not for battle, but judgment. A noble line, some said. A cursed one, others whispered.
Genevieve smiled wider, baring no fangs, but her teeth were too white. Too sharp.
"Mmm, it's cute. Romantic, even… The brooding man in black. Whispers of coffins and curses. But you?" She leaned forward, her tone lowering, conspiratorial. "You're not a vampire, Viktor. Vampires feed and leave the body. You got scales all under that skin. You sleep on memories and wake up hungry with a shadow."
She said it like he belonged to her. Like the hunger in him had been inherited by her simply through proximity—through legacy. That was her trick. Ownership masked as prophecy.
And Viktor heard it, clear as bells in a silent room.
You are mine, her tone implied. Mine because you were chosen, because you are fire beneath silk, because your legacy already sings my name.
But Viktor was no pawn. And he was no prize.
He was the dragon in the deep, and she'd do well to remember dragons didn't answer to summoning circles or bloodlines. They answered to nothing but will—and vengeance.
There was once a time, long ago, when fae and dragons mated freely—when kingdoms offered their daughters to scaled kings in exchange for harvest or protection. It was more common than most liked to admit. But even then, there were whispers about the unnaturalness of it. How most fae, especially those of older courts, kept the forms of eternal youth. Childlike features, soft-voiced giggles. And dragons, when they wore skin, appeared only as men—towering, commanding, ancient.
It wasn't a crime to look like a child when you weren't—but it didn't sit right with Viktor. Not then. Not now. Not ever.
That world wasn't for him. Not even close. Let others romanticize it—he'd carve his own legacy in flame and shadow, not in myth that excused the grotesque.
A slow stream of smoke slipped from Viktor's mouth.He was getting tired of her talking about his shadow.She was addit to him mostly. Genevieve's eyes glinted. "You're a dragon. That's why no one sees you coming." She stood now, naked save for her wings, and paced slowly across the rug like a queen surveying her private altar. "That's why the slaves never looked at you twice," she continued as mad woman on an rant "They never ran. They didn't smell the fire on your breath. They thought you were quiet,controlled,and merciful."
She paused behind his chair, resting her fingers lightly on the back. "And that's why some of them make such… perfect subjects. Overlooke,unused, and moldable." His pencil snapped in his hand as he gave her what she wanted. She felt temperature died and saw the shadows move around the room. She smiled like he saw god.He rose slowly, taller than her even with the wings, and turned to face her fully. He blew smoke in her face and she sniffs it in her body. It was smoker high for her."Ah. There he is...my dragon."
"Watch it," Viktor said, voice low and tightening like a coiled chain. She cocked her head. "What? I'm just speaking truths. I thought you valued honesty. You are technically mine—my father said so. You might seem like you're free… but—"
He moved from her, disgust in his bones, but she crawled behind him like a predator in silk. Her lips pressed to his shadow, kisses dripping with intention. His shadow flinched and dodged her touch.
"I said—watch it," he repeated, louder now. "Your father's payment is nearly settled. Once it's done—"
She tried to rise again, reaching to suck the power off his finger like it was wine from a priest's chalice, but he jerked his hand away. She danced around him, barefoot and glowing, like a fairy drunk on forbidden rites.
"This isn't just some nobleman's entitlement," Viktor growled. "This is deeper. Dirtier. A fae thing, twisted by time."
He knew the history—how fae once tried to claim dragons in courtly games and blood-written vows. But they had to learn, painfully, when they tried to tame the wrong kind. There were creatures in the old African mountains, old as the continent itself, whose breath carried truths no spell could bury. A fae court once tried to enslave one of those beings—half god, half silence—and it ended with a kingdom swallowed whole. Fae learned then: some powers don't bend, they consume.
She wasn't just playing with fire. She was mocking the ashes of every warning.
"You'll be free of me?" she cut in, laughing softly. "Darling, if that were true, you'd have let me rot in my gilded tower years ago."
He regretted helping her—especially after her father ordered him to lie about it. He would've left her there, cold in that velvet cage woven with illusions and sweetened spells. But that was the trap, wasn't it? A faery snare dressed in silk and honey. She didn't just want his hand—she wanted his word, his silence, his shadow. The kind of trap they wrote about in old folktales: where a man steps through a ring of mushrooms and never sees daylight again.
But back then… he was still too soft. Too mortal in his mercy. Too foolish to see that her cage had no bars—only invitations.
Now he glared.
"You think this is love?" he said, voice like iron dragged through ice. "It's leverage. Your father bought me your presence like a chess piece placed for war."
She pouted, head turning with an exaggerated sigh. "And yet," she murmured, gliding past him, wings brushing his shoulder like silk soaked in poison, "you still get so very upset when I play. When I play the same tune you do."
But Viktor wasn't the same man anymore—and he wasn't the same monster either. He knew the difference now. The difference between shadow and rot. Between Sabine's quiet truths, whispered from spider-thread wisdom, and the Shadow Man's hard lines drawn in folklore and fury.
Sabine's words echoed: "Not everything that touches shadow understands it. Some feed it. Some are fed."
Genevieve didn't understand. She fed it like a songbird tearing bread from a stranger's hand, never wondering if the stranger was a god. She wanted ownership of something ancient, something boundless. But she would never comprehend it.
And that's what made her dangerous.
Then, with a glimmer of fae cruelty and just enough theater to nauseate, she changed.
Her body reshaped into Ayoka's—but only in shape. The skin stayed ghost-pale, the hair silver like spoiled starlight. She exaggerated the curves just enough to parody them, her mimicry of Ayoka's voice laced with cloying sweetness like rotten sugar.
"I love you, мой жених," she purred, using the Russian word with a wicked curl of her tongue. "Moi zhenikh. My fiancé."
She fluttered her lashes in slow motion, one hand draped dramatically across her belly like a stage actress mid-soliloquy. "I want everything… даже ребёнка. Even a child."
She rubbed her womb in lazy circles like she was tracing out ownership rights, humming a lullaby twisted in its rhythm. "Do you think she sings to it?" she added with a mock pout. "So tragic. You really do have a type."
It was petty. It was fae. It was meant to draw blood without touching him.
Viktor didn't move right away. But something old stirred behind his eyes—something that didn't blink, didn't breathe, and didn't find this amusing at all.
He turned, fixing her with a stare that peeled her illusions back like wet wallpaper. He knew she wanted to be hurt by his shadow—to pierce herself on something sharp and ancient, and he wanted, deeply, to slap her across the room for the stunt she was pulling. But his aura fed the room instead—hot, furious, undeniable. It was addictive to her kind.
He spoke, cold and sharp: "'Fiancée' is just a word you keep repeating like it'll root you here. It's not law. It's not love. It's not even strategy. It's wishful thinking."
Then, with a grim smile, he let his magic coil inward like a serpent, tightening around itself.
"Заткнись, ведьма. Ты ничего не знаешь о тенях." Shut up, witch. You know nothing of shadows.
Genevieve did not like that. Not one bit.
Her smirk faltered for the briefest second. He started to finish the art he started of her. "You're not as clever as you think, Genevieve."
She paused, lips parting. Then, with a slow tilt of her head: "Neither are you, but we both pretend beautifully."
But Viktor wasn't pretending anymore. He had seen addicts before—not just to substances or spells, but to presence. Power. Even holiness. Some people chased the feeling they got near sacred land, or relics, or people who glowed a little too brightly. Some drank magic like wine and prayed to gods they'd invented in desperation. Genevieve wasn't addicted to him. She was addicted to what clung to him.
And addicts? They always took it too far.
Sabine had once told him, in her careful spider-soft way, "People don't always love what they touch. Sometimes they just want to own what they can't understand."
That kind of obsession had started wars. It had turned temples to ash. He could still recall one of the early texts—about a highborn fae who tried to trap a fire spirit in a bottle of moon glass, only for the whole forest to vanish overnight. Some people loved the warmth so much, they walked straight into the fire. Genevieve was already burning.
Viktor didn't need magic to win battles like this. He just needed patience. And distance. And a reminder of what was real.
The fae would lose interest eventually. They always did—once the shine dulled and they realized you weren't going to burn for them.
Genevieve went back to her seat, but the silence said more than her grin ever could.