Ode to A Dying Star || r.b

LXIV. solaris

"They won't say it cruelly," Mavis continued. "Just carelessly. You'll be used to it by now."

"I am."

"Are you?"

Kione didn't answer. She reached for her tea again and took a long, slow sip. The taste was too sweet.

The library was quieter than usual, a strange hush muffling the usual turning of pages and scratch of quills. Kione wandered the rows not in search of a book, but for the sake of stillness itself. A familiar route. The dark wood shelves. The heavy scent of parchment and ink. Here, nothing asked anything of her.

She passed one of the reading alcoves and paused. A bouquet of enchanted thistle-blooms floated above a desk, humming faintly with charmed music. Someone had left them for someone else. The petals shimmered a soft lavender. Deliberate, but not loud. Like a whisper meant to be heard by only one person.

Her fingers brushed the edge of a shelf as she moved past it, her mind elsewhere now. In greenhouses and glass jars. In the press of silence between one breath and the next.

And then-

"Kione."

The voice drew her gently back.

She turned. Evan was there-half in shadow, half in light, leaning lightly against the far edge of a bookcase. He looked too comfortable in places he didn't belong. There was something almost careless about the way he stood, like he had been waiting but wouldn't mind if no one came.

His hands were behind his back.

"You always find the quiet places," he said, stepping forward, the corner of his mouth twitching with what might've been a smile.

"It rarely stays that way," she returned.

"Maybe." He stopped just in front of her, then brought his hand forward.

In it was a small bundle-nothing like the extravagant bouquets they'd passed in the hall. No charmed thistles, no velvet wrapping. Just a few sprigs of something dark-stemmed and quietly blooming. Not red, not pink. They were soft blue, near-silver at the edges.

"I found these in the greenhouse," Evan said. "Thought you'd know what to do with them."

Kione didn't reach for them at first. She looked at the bundle, then at him.

A shrug. "Astilbe. That's what they are."

"Did you do something that needs apologising?"

"Not yet."

She took them, slowly. The stems were cool in her hand. She studied the curve of each bloom as though trying to read something between the petals.

Evan shifted, gaze dipping for a moment. "You smiled when you saw them last."

"I didn't notice."

"Maybe not," he said. "But you're doing it again."

And she was.

She looked up, eyes still distant, smile quiet but not hidden. It wasn't a wide smile. Not performative or expectant. Just a small flicker, a soft thing.

She didn't say thank you. He didn't ask for one.

They stood there a moment longer in the breathless space between rows, not quite close, not quite apart.

Then she moved past him without a word.

He didn't stop her.

But he followed after a beat.

Just a step behind. As though it had been planned.

As though it always would be.

They walked without speaking.

The flowers lay still in her hand now, its petals soft against her palm, not wilting under the castle's chill. Kione didn't tuck it away, didn't try to make it disappear. She held it the way she might a ribbon of thought she didn't yet know the name for.

Evan didn't ask where they were going, and she didn't offer. They simply moved through the quiet corners of the library until the light from the windows thinned to a cool, grey spill, shadows stretching long across the floor.

When she stopped, it was beside the arched window in the Transfiguration wing-the one that overlooked the lake. The frost had melted just enough for condensation to ghost the glass, and beyond it, the trees along the shore looked bare but not lifeless.

She leaned against the sill with one shoulder, the bouquet hanging by her side.

He didn't ask to join her, but he stayed.

The silence stretched, not uncomfortable but fine-threaded, like an old wool sweater-warm enough to wear, worn enough to feel familiar. Outside, two students walked past on the path toward the greenhouses, red scarves flapping in the wind. One of them was laughing.

Kione's gaze didn't leave the window.

"I used to think February was cruel," she said suddenly. "A month pretending to be light, still cold underneath. People throw flowers at it and hope it softens."

Evan glanced at her, his profile lit by the fading light.

"And now?"

"I still think it's cruel," she murmured. "But I don't mind it as much."

"Because of the flowers?"

"Because I'm no longer waiting for it to be kind."

He was quiet for a moment, then said, "That's a very you answer."

She didn't reply, but the corner of her mouth tugged slightly-just slightly.

He looked at her, really looked this time. As if something about the tilt of her expression, the rhythm of her thoughts, the half-shadow on her cheek had made her real again. Or perhaps had made her quiet something that echoed a little too clearly in him.

She didn't meet his eyes. Her fingers were grazing the edge of the window frame now.

"This isn't a game," she said, so softly it might have been a thought.

"I know."

"And I'm not someone to win."

Evan nodded, slowly. "I'm not trying to win."

That, at least, made her turn to him. Her gaze held his-not hard or wary, but searching. She studied him the way she did books she read more than once: careful, a little curious, unhurried.

Then she looked down at the Astilbe.

A breath passed between them.

"Thank you," she said, barely louder than the wind outside.

He didn't smile. He just stayed.

The halls were warmer by dinner, though the torches seemed to flicker more restlessly, casting sharp, gold shapes against the walls. Mavis met her halfway up the Ravenclaw staircase, a string of sugar quills in her hand and some new rumor ready on her tongue.

"You're late," she said, mock-accusatory.

"I wasn't aware we had a reservation."

"You missed a Hufflepuff serenading someone with a lute. A lute, Kione."

She made a faint noise in response.

Mavis fell into step beside her. "Where were you?"

"Library."

"You're always in the library."

Kione didn't correct her. She only adjusted the bundle of astilbe in her sleeve, letting the smallest of petals peek from her robes. Just enough to breathe.

Just enough to remember.