To Love A Villain

Chapter 217: Eternal Wait

>>Enya

Emrys took a few steps forward, slow and deliberate. "You’re right, Enya. Ahin doesn’t need to prove it anymore. But loyalty isn’t proven once. It’s tested... again and again."

"No," I said instantly, stepping between them. "You can’t take him again. You won’t."

Emrys tilted his head slightly. "That isn’t your decision."

"He’s not ready," I insisted, feeling the panic rise in my throat. "And you saw what happened last time. You admitted he was loyal. Why do you want to do this again?"

"Because the wilds are changing," Emrys replied calmly. "The miasma is thicker. The monsters are more unstable. I need to know how much longer he can last—if he can last. Especially if he’s going to be guarding you."

"Don’t make this about me!" I snapped.

"It’s always been about you," he said coolly.

Before I could open my mouth again, I felt Ahin’s hand gently grasp my wrist. I turned to him.

He didn’t look afraid. Just calm.

"I’ll go."

"No—" I tried, shaking my head, "don’t just agree like that—Ahin, please."

He gave me a small smile, the kind that hurt more than comforted. "I said I’d stay by your side. And I will. But if this is what I have to do to keep staying... then I’ll go."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to beg Emrys to stop this madness. But instead, I stood frozen as Ahin stepped forward and nodded at Emrys.

"When?" he asked quietly.

"Now," Emrys said. "Get ready."

The words echoed through me like a blade sliding in slow.

As they both turned to walk away, I stared at Ahin’s back, my fingers curled into my cloak.

I opened my mouth to argue, to scream, to say ’Don’t leave me’, but nothing came out.

Because in that moment, I realized something unbearable:

I couldn’t make a choice.

I couldn’t force him to stay and risk everything. I couldn’t stop Emrys without making it worse. And I couldn’t go with him, not into that fog that kills anything it touches.

So I let him go.

If I stopped Ahin here, Emrys could snap and kill him right here...

Ahin stepped away, the soft echo of his boots on stone retreating down the hall. Right before he turned the corner, he glanced back at me.

That same smile. Gentle. Reassuring.

And it made it worse.

Because I wasn’t gentle. I wasn’t calm. Inside me, something was fraying.

I pressed my hand over my mouth and stood in the corridor long after they were gone. I didn’t cry. Not then. I just... stood.

Helpless.

Powerless.

Useless.

And yet—I waited.

I waited like I did the first time.

***

I stayed by the window, watching the thick clouds roll in over the treetops, the sky hanging heavy and dark like a soaked curtain. The forest beyond the mansion had lost its shape. The miasma blurred the trees into ghosts.

I told myself it would only be a few hours.

Ahin had promised he would return. He had smiled at me, even as Emrys called him away. That smile had been quiet, but real. He meant it. I knew he did.

So I waited.

I cleaned the same corner of the room twice. Sat beside Rika while she napped and braided her hair with shaking fingers. I tried to draw, like I used to before everything got so complicated even though it wasn’t my thing. I just did it because Einar did it, but the charcoal snapped under my grip. The lines wouldn’t come out right.

Noon passed.

Then evening.

I wandered out to the corridor again, pacing its length until my legs ached. The cold wind howled through the cracks in the walls, but I didn’t move from my spot by the window.

They’ll come back.

Of course they will.

They have to.

The lamps were lit. Dinner came and went. I didn’t eat.

Einar didn’t ask where I had gone. He saw me there, standing silent by the glass. He only placed a thick coat over my shoulders before walking away. That small kindness nearly broke me.

Night fell.

I kept listening for footsteps. Kept imagining the creak of the door, Ahin’s voice saying my name in that low, gentle way of his. I replayed every moment we had shared—his laugh, the way he looked at me when I wasn’t paying attention, the feel of his fingers brushing mine. I held onto those memories like threads, weaving them into a lifeline.

Just a few more hours.

Morning came.

They didn’t.

The snow piled higher outside. The miasma swallowed the horizon now, creeping closer to the garden, curling along the edges of the mansion walls. I watched the big tree where Rika once played—now bare and rimmed with frost. The same tree where Ahin had once knelt to wrap his shirt around the shivering fox. That quiet tenderness of his burned in my memory.

He’d gone back into that place. That cursed, godless wild.

And I had let him.

One day passed.

Then another.

Two turned into three. Three stretched into seven.

The days blurred. I couldn’t sleep without dreaming of shadowy shapes, of Emrys returning alone, of Ahin’s hand reaching for mine and slipping through my fingers.

I stopped counting the days after the second week.

I just... waited.

With the same clothes, the same cold in my chest, the same ache in my throat that refused to become tears.

The mansion became too quiet. Rika asked for her brother with wide, worried eyes, and I gave her a smile I no longer believed in.

Because deep down, something was beginning to whisper.

What if he wasn’t coming back this time?

And yet—still—I waited.

Time did not stop.

It only dulled—growing heavy and slow, dragging us with it.

Spring came and went like a shadow passing over our window. The garden outside bloomed half-heartedly, as if nature itself was mourning. The air remained cold. Not just with the northern chill, but with the creeping breath of the miasma that had long slithered past the boundaries of the wild and now reached the very walls of the mansion.

The world beyond was vanishing. One city after another closed its gates and raised its barrier. Communication ceased. The wind no longer carried birdsong, only silence and the distant wail of things we dared not name.

We waited through it all—me, Einar, and Rika.

At first, we still spoke of Ahin. Of Emrys. Of the chance they might come back. We took turns watching the forest edge, kept meals warm longer than necessary, left the lights on in the corridor leading to the front doors.

But as the days folded into weeks, and weeks unraveled into months, we stopped saying his name.

It hurt too much.

I watched Einar retreat into a silence I had never known him to wear. His once-sharp gaze dulled, and though he never spoke of it.

Rika tried to be strong. For me, for her brother, for herself. She played less. She spoke even less than that. Some nights I’d find her curled by the window with Ahin’s jacket in her lap, eyes red, arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to hold in her loneliness.

Summer came. But it brought no warmth.

The days were longer, yes, but it felt cruel—like time was mocking us.

And then came the night.

The night she ran away

It was the night of the full moon. The air was thick and sour with the scent of passing miasma, heavier than it had ever been before. I heard the door creak open, heard her barefoot steps against the floor, and by the time I rushed downstairs, she was gone.

Einar and I chased her into the forest without hesitation.

I don’t even remember screaming her name. I only remember the blur of trees, the sound of our breath, and the glow of her shifting body vanishing into the mist like a dying star. She had shifted into her wolf form, panicked and desperate. She ran as though something inside her had broken.

We lost her.

The miasma thickened as we searched, but there was no sign. No prints, no scent. Not even a sound.

We came back with bloodied hands and hollow eyes.

After that, the mansion became unbearable.

Every room echoed too loudly. Every breath we took felt like betrayal—like we weren’t meant to still be here while she and Ahin weren’t.

Einar stopped looking out the window.

I stopped going near the wild.

Two days after Rika had vanished under the light of the full moon, the world had gone deathly still. The miasma had thickened since then—denser, heavier, pressing against the glass like breath from something massive and unseen. We had searched until our lungs burned and our feet froze, calling her name into the suffocating dark. But she was gone, swallowed like the rest.

I had just sat down with a cup of untouched tea in my hands when I saw it.

Out the frost-glazed window, by the old tree we used to sit beneath in better times—something moved.

At first, I thought it was just some wild animal. But then I saw it.

A body. Small. Barely upright. Limp.

"Rika," I whispered, my voice catching in my throat.

"Einar!" I shouted, my chair scraping against the floor as I ran.

He appeared from the hallway at once. One look at my face was all he needed. Together, we threw open the doors and raced towards the tree.

Rika had collapsed right against the trunk, her wolf form half-shifted back into that of a girl—bare skin against the ground, trembling hands streaked with blood and dirt. Her breathing was shallow. Her body—ruined.

I dropped to my knees beside her, "Rika? Rika, open your eyes, please—!"