To Love A Villain

Chapter 220: My Mate

>>Ahin

The snow crunched under my boots, soft and steady like the sound of distant waves. I liked the cold. It cleared my head, gave shape to the strange fog that never quite left me. Around the duke’s mansion, the world was muted in white—trees laced in frost, hedges bowed beneath snowfall, and the old iron fence half-buried in a drifting silence.

I kept walking, hands tucked into my coat, breath misting in the chill. Above, a few windows glowed softly with firelight, flickering yellow and gold against the deepening dusk.

And then, like a tether I couldn’t see but always felt, my eyes drifted upward.

Her window.

I saw them there—Enya, Einar, and Hael. The curtains were partly drawn, but their silhouettes were clear enough through the frost-kissed glass. The young master sat upright on the bed, looking better than he had in days. Enya stood nearby, arms crossed, her head tilted as she listened to the mage speak. Hael’s presence warped the air around him, even from here, as if the magic he carried couldn’t help but ripple outward.

But my gaze didn’t stay on him long.

It never did.

It always went to her.

Enya.

Even her name made something stir in my chest. Something unspoken and unsettling. Whenever I looked at her—really looked at her—I felt... wrong.

Not like I’d made a mistake, but like something had.

There was no reason for the ache in my heart, the tightness in my throat whenever I saw her smile, or heard her laugh echo through the halls. No reason for why she always lingered in my thoughts long after I’d turned away. I didn’t remember her. Not really. I didn’t even know her.

And yet—

Every time our eyes met, I felt like I was falling into a memory I didn’t know I had. Like I did know her. Like I had spent months with her.

She always looked at me like she was waiting for something.

And I never knew what to give her.

I hated that.

I hated not knowing.

I was still staring up at the window when the ground beneath me changed.

At first, I didn’t notice it. A warmth pressed up through the soles of my boots, seeping through the snow, cracking through the frost like spring breaking open the earth. I looked down—

—and saw the glowing lines of a teleportation circle.

!?!?!

My breath caught.

It pulsed once—twice—and then the world snapped around me.

The courtyard vanished in a flash of searing light, the cold whipped away, and everything twisted inward with a soundless roar.

No time to move.

No time to react

Just that final image burned into my mind:

Her face, behind the glass.

And then—

Gone.

***

>>Enya

The clock ticked in the corner of Einar’s room, too loud, too steady. I paced from one end of the chamber to the other, the heels of my boots scuffing softly against the rug. I wasn’t even pretending to be calm anymore. My hands were tight fists, then open palms, then fists again. The fire crackled in the hearth, casting long shadows across the floor, but the warmth did nothing to ease the cold that had taken root inside me.

A week.

Seven days since Hael had taken Ahin.

Seven days since the flash of light had burned across the snow and swept him away like he was never ours to begin with.

Einar, for all his calm, had grown restless too. He was sitting up in bed now, propped against the pillows, his eyes following me as I paced like a ghost haunting the floorboards.

"You’re going to wear a hole in the carpet," he said gently.

I shot him a look, but there was no heat behind it.

"If he’s not back by tonight—"

"He’ll come," Einar said. "Hael may be a thousand things, but he doesn’t leave things unfinished."

But I didn’t want to hear about Hael. I didn’t care how competent he was. I cared about Ahin. And where he was. What he was going through. Whether he was safe. Whether he would even be himself when he came back.

If he came back.

"He’ll be fine," Einar said, "You know that Hael will complete this task solely because this is a challenge to his abilities."

I paused

I know... But still, it didn’t make the worry go away.

I turned again, about to say something—anything—when the air shifted.

It started like a ripple through the space in front of the hearth, a shimmer just barely visible. The magic in the room thickened, humming under my skin, raising goosebumps on my arms. The warmth from the fire twisted unnaturally, pulling inward.

And then the floor glowed.

The teleportation circle bloomed beneath the rug, light spilling through the threads in soft, ancient sigils. My breath caught. Einar sat up straighter. I moved closer, too fast, heart thundering.

A flash of light.

A surge of wind.

And Ahin was there.

He dropped to one knee as he landed, one hand on the floor, breathing hard like he’d just come through a storm. His hair was tousled, a little longer than before, snow still melting on his shoulders. His eyes were wild for a moment—lost, disoriented. Like he didn’t recognize where he was. Like he wasn’t sure he’d ever stood in this room before.

He looked at Einar first, blinking.

Then he looked at me.

And everything in me froze.

He said nothing. His lips parted slightly, but no words came out. His gaze roamed over my face, searching, pulling back layers I didn’t know I was still holding on to.

I took a shaky step forward. "Ahin..."

He flinched, just slightly. My name was a thread pulling taut in the air between us.

"Do you..." I tried to keep my voice steady, but it cracked anyway. "Do you remember who I am?"

A beat of silence.

Then another.

He stared at me, his eyes narrowing just slightly, as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear. Something far away, inside him.

And then—he smiled.

Soft. Slow. Like sunlight returning after too many gray days.

"My mate," he said, voice rough but certain.

My heart stuttered.

I couldn’t breathe for a moment. I couldn’t move.

Einar made a sound—a breath of laughter, maybe relief—but I barely heard it.

Ahin was still watching me, like I was the only person in the room. Like I had always been the only person in the room.

I rushed forward, and before I knew it, I was holding him—arms around his shoulders, his heartbeat thundering against mine. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t hesitate. His arms wrapped around my waist with quiet certainty, like they remembered exactly where I belonged.

We stood like that, in the middle of the room, surrounded by firelight and old magic and the steady, beautiful sound of something once broken slowly stitching itself back together.

***

The streets of Lysvale were dressed in winter’s best — garlands strung between lantern posts, ribbons fluttering gently in the breeze, and shop windows glowing amber against the frost. Snowflakes drifted lazily from the sky, catching in the locks of Ahin’s hair, dusting his shoulders like sugar.

We walked side by side, not saying much. There wasn’t a need. The town was alive with quiet joy — the kind that didn’t need to shout. Children darted between stalls, merchants laughed behind thick scarves, and the smell of roasted chestnuts wafted from somewhere down the lane.

"Is this always like this in the winter?" Ahin asked, eyes flicking from one storefront to another.

"Only when there’s a festival coming," I said, nudging him with my shoulder. "And when the snow’s just right. Everyone gets a little happier when the streets look like a painting."

He glanced at me, then up at the falling snow. "You were right. It does look like a painting."

We paused in front of a little bakery with fogged-up windows and crooked shutters. Through the glass, golden rolls sat in a basket beside a rack of spice cookies shaped like stars and foxes. Ahin squinted, then smiled faintly.

"That one looks like you," he said, pointing to a particularly squashed fox cookie.

"I’m offended," I said, then opened the door. A rush of warmth and cinnamon greeted us.

We left a few minutes later with a small paper bag of gingerbread, our gloves dusted with sugar. Ahin tried to eat his without cracking the icing, failed, then offered me the other half with a look that said help me fix this.

I took it. "You’re hopeless."

"I never claimed otherwise," he said, amused.

We wandered further, past the fountain where someone had hung little glass charms from the statues, each one catching the light like frozen raindrops. The charm-maker, an old woman with a hunched back and the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen, waved us over with a knowing smile.

"For the girl," she said, holding out a pendant shaped like a falling star. "And for the boy who watches her like he’s waiting to wake up."

Ahin blinked. Then got a little shy

I took the charm slowly. "Thank you."

She just smiled wider, then went back to her whittling like nothing had passed between us at all.

Ahin was quiet as we left the square, charm clutched loosely in my hand.

"That obvious?" he asked after a while.

"Only to everyone," I said, teasing.

He rolled his eyes, but then he looked at me — really looked — and there was something so gentle there, I forgot the cold entirely.

"I like this," he said. "Just... being here. With you."

"Me too." I kissed his cheek

We circled back as the town’s lanterns flickered to life one by one, little golden flames against the blue of early night. Our steps slowed as we reached the edge of the plaza. He turned toward me, scarf half-unraveled, eyes bright from the cold and something softer.