A gasp tore from Lillian’s throat.
Oh no!
Desperate to reach the floor of the gorge, she abandoned the winding path and practically threw herself down the steep, rocky slope.
Halfway down, her boot caught on a slick patch of loose gravel.
She lost her footing, crashed onto her knees, and slid the rest of the way over rough basalt before finally staggering to a stop at the bottom of the hollow.
Panting heavily, her knitted cardigan coated in grey dust and her heart hammering violently against her ribs, Lillian scrambled to her feet.
The burning scrape across her knees barely registered.
There was only one thing she needed to know.
The bloody hollow was dead silent.
All four Vanguards were sprawled motionless across the gravel with broken armor, torn leather, and unconscious bodies scattered like debris.
Splatters of dark blood painted the sharp cheekbone of the pureblood currently standing in the middle of the gorge.
He did not even look like he had been in a life-or-death brawl; his posture was as relaxed as ever, though his head was tilted slightly to the side, watching Lillian in confusion.
“?”
It was the first time she had ever seen the Laurent heir look genuinely, thoroughly bewildered.
“Lillian?” he began slowly, his voice laced with faint disbelief.
Before he could finish the thought, a murderous snarl tore through the air behind him.
The Vanguard who had been knocked down first pushed himself up from the dirt, his bloodied face twisted in feral rage as he lunged for Roman’s open back.
Roman did not even bother turning around.
Without breaking eye contact with Lillian, he whipped his left arm backward.
His knuckles connected with the Vanguard’s jaw with a sickening, heavy CRACK.
The man’s eyes rolled back instantly, and he crumpled back into the dirt, completely knocked out cold.
Roman did not glance down at the body.
He simply shook out his hand as he took her in.
Lillian looked like an absolute disaster.
Her dark hair was wildly windswept and tangled with stray leaves, her face flushed red from sprinting three hundred yards through freezing drafts, and her cardigan was coated in grey dust from her desperate slide down the rocks.
His gaze drifted past her flushed cheeks, landing on his own forearm.
The shallow cut across his sleeve was oozing a thick, viscous fluid, the black veining of the poison already crawling down his skin toward his fingertips, dripping steadily onto the dry stone below.
“What are you doing here?” Roman asked, his tone a mix of amusement and genuine curiosity.
Lillian took a ragged step forward, her gaze locked onto the black blood pooling at his feet.
Instead of answering his question, she asked, “Are you… are you okay?”
Roman looked down at his arm, watching the black poison hiss when it hit the dirt, then looked back up at her trembling frame.
For reasons he could not quite explain, he found himself studying her worried expression a little longer than he intended.
“I’m fine, Lils,” he said, his voice dropping into that familiar warmth that instantly cut through the howling wind.
“It takes a lot more than a dirty blade from a bottom-tier Vanguard to put me down.”
Lillian stopped a foot away from him, her hands hovering uselessly near his arm as she stared at the black veins in horror.
“But it’s not just a blade, Roman, it’s— it’s a toxin! I overheard Vance talking about it earlier. It’s meant to paralyze your limbs and stop your regeneration completely! You’re bleeding black!”
Roman raised an eyebrow, amusement flickering in his eyes as he looked down at his arm once again.
Taking a slow breath, he focused inward, flexing his fingers to consciously trigger his body’s blood-lineage magic.
Only for nothing to happen.
Where a normal wound would instantly knit together with crimson threads of vampire regeneration, the cut remained open.
He tried to force it through, but the necrotic toxin was acting like a dirty lock in his bloodstream, actively suppressing his natural healing.
Ah.
It really was a custom warlock brew.
Yet, Roman did not panic.
Only an amused hum escaped his throat.
Being born into the Laurent family meant that surviving assassination attempts was practically part of the childhood curriculum.
From a young age, he had been systematically exposed to synthetic poisons, necrotic agents, and cursed steel just to build resistance.
He knew how to isolate a toxin in his veins to buy time even if his immediate regeneration was currently blocked.
This was not his first time dealing with dark alchemy, and it certainly would not be his last.
It was an inconvenience, sure, but far from fatal.
The poison was manageable.
The far more unfamiliar problem was the girl standing in front of him.
Roman lowered his arm, looking at her with a faint, wondering expression.
“Did you come here to warn me?”
She nodded quickly, her eyes flicking back to his arm, watching another droplet of thick, black blood fall onto the stone as a sharp pang of guilt twisted in her chest.
“Well… I was going to warn you,” she explained.
Her fingers twitched, stopping inches from his sleeve as if she could somehow undo the damage just by standing close enough.
“Before you… before Vance actually cut you. If I hadn’t thrown that rock, you wouldn’t have been distracted.”
Roman’s gaze flickered with brief understanding.
Ah, that rock.
“If you haven’t noticed, Vance is currently lying unconscious in a pile of rubble with his little crew,” he pointed out, offering her a half-amused look.
“I’d say your rock worked just fine.”
“That’s not the point,” she shook her head in frustration.
“I came to prevent it but somehow made it worse.”
“Lils—”
“I heard Vance at the Dispensary,” she said quickly.
“I saw him showing off the warlock’s toxin and talking about ambushing you. I couldn’t just… sit in my dorm room and pretend I didn’t know.”
Roman stayed quiet, watching her with his head slightly tilted.
The usual mocking glint in his eyes softened into an unfamiliar silence.
For once, looking at her face so close completely silenced him, leaving him without a single word to fire back.
“And today in class… you took every single lecture question without hesitating just because I was exhausted.”
“…”
“You helped me, so I thought,” she cleared her throat.
“So I thought I should return the favour…”
Roman watched her like he was physically mesmerised.
“…Return the favour.”
She nodded.
“Yes.”
A tiny smile threatened to pull at the corner of his mouth, but he forced it down.
“So this,” he gestured vaguely between them, “is debt repayment?”
Lillian hesitated.
“It’s… it’s a matter of principle…” She clarified.
“If you overheard people planning to seriously hurt someone, staying silent makes you part of it.”
“…”
“So I would’ve done the same for anyone.”
Roman barely heard the rest of what she said.
The only thing circling back in his mind was the fact that she had run here… for him.
For him???
She had heard his name.
She had known someone intended to hurt him.
And without stopping to weigh the risks or consider whether he even needed her, she had gone looking for him.
His voice softened without him intending to as he asked, “Anyone?”
Lillian nodded slowly, watching him meekly.
“…Yes.”
“Not me specifically?”
Lillian clamped her mouth shut.
Under the intense, unwavering weight of his stare, she felt her resolve cracked.
Her eyes drifted away from his, unable to withstand the silent expectation in them.
“Lils,” Roman said, more gently this time, making her look back at him.
“Were you worried about me?”
The question was unexpected, he knew.
That was why he had expected another excuse or another awkward attempt to dodge the question.
She had spent the entire conversation trying to minimize what she had done anyway, so surely she would hesitate again before admitting something like that.
Instead, after only a brief silence, she let out the smallest sigh, surrendering to the battle she knew she could no longer win.
“…I was,” she admitted in a reluctant whisper.
“Okay? I was worried.”
The wind shrieked through the basalt walls, whipping dark strands of hair across his forehead, but he did not move a single muscle.
Roman stared down at her; at the leaves tangled in her hair, the faint smudge of grey dirt across her cheekbone, and the fierce, honest concern shining in her eyes.
For the first time in his life, he found himself completely speech-bound.
He could not speak because he could not even name what was happening inside him—an unfamiliar warmth settling beneath his ribs.
It felt as though a door he had spent a lifetime ignoring had just swung wide open.
Startled at his own action, Roman clamped his lips firmly together and turned his head aside, his knuckles brushing against his cheek as he looked up at the endless stretch of night overhead, searching the darkness for a composure that had already slipped beyond his reach.
It was useless.
Because the smile still gathered at the corners of his mouth, warm and unguarded, demanding to exist.
Worse, he could feel the faint warmth creeping across his face as he pressed his knuckle a little harder against his cheek, hoping to somehow hide the evidence of his own reaction from her.
When he looked back at her, his crimson eyes lingered with a stillness they had never held before.
He took her in slowly, treasuring every fragile detail with a startling reverence.
Somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, Lillian Shaw became the most beautiful thing he had ever laid eyes on.
Meanwhile, Lillian was still watching him anxiously, her gaze darting between his face and the open wound on his arm.
Roman was standing so still, the howling wind whipping his dark hair across his eyes, that for a terrifying second, she thought the toxin was finally paralyzing his vocal cords.
She completely missed the soft, helpless smile he was desperately hiding against his knuckle, or the way his eyes, when he finally looked back at her, were practically glowing with a dizzying devotion.
All Lillian saw was that he was standing upright, his breath steady, and his posture remarkably relaxed for someone currently bleeding black blood.
The tension slowly eased from her shoulders.
“…You look okay,” she murmured, almost to herself.
“I’m glad.”
The words were so quiet they nearly disappeared beneath the wind.
Lillian let out a small breath, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“I was terrified the toxin was going to work instantly… Maybe the warlock ripped Vance off, or maybe the dose was too diluted?”
Roman could not answer.
He was too busy floating somewhere far beyond reason, his thoughts hopelessly tangled around the fact that Lillian was worried about him.
He had just defeated four Vanguards, yet somehow one admission from her made him feel invincible—like he could fight another hundred battles and never lose a single one.
Lillian’s attention returned to his arm.
“Still…” she frowned.
“You should get it cleaned.” She looked back up at him with hopeful eyes.
“The academy’s infirmary should know what to do. We just have to hope they don’t report us to the disciplinary committee for sneaking out past curfew.”
Roman’s heart gave an utterly inconvenient lurch upon hearing her suggestion.
He knew exactly what this toxin was doing, and more importantly, how to deal with it.
Waiting in his dormitory cabinet were several antidotes he trusted far more than anything the academy infirmary could offer.
All he had to do was return to his room.
But… Lillian looked so earnestly concerned.
Roman weighed his options for precisely half a second.
The infirmary, it was.
“Let’s go, then,” Lillian said at once, relief softening her expression as she turned toward the path leading back to the academy.
Roman followed without complaint.
He managed exactly two steps when a hiss escaped between his teeth.
His brows drew together, his shoulders dipped ever so slightly, and one hand immediately closed over the poisoned wound, deliberately angling his injured arm away and tucking his elbow tight against his side so not a single drop of the dark, corrupted blood could ruin her cardigan or touch her skin.
Lillian spun around so fast she nearly lost her footing.
“Roman?”
“Lils—” he called out, his knees buckling dramatically.
Lillian gasped and darted forward immediately, catching him by the upper arm to steady him.
Roman allowed himself to heavily lean into her just enough for her to feel his weight, his chin coming to rest precariously close to her shoulder.
He squeezed his eyes shut as he let out a low, strained groan that sounded agonizingly genuine.
“It’s… fine,” Roman gritted out through his teeth, putting on the performance of his life.
“Just a… sudden spike. The toxin… it’s creeping up.”
“I knew it!” Lillian’s voice spiked into panic, her arms tightening around him as she tried to keep him upright.
“I knew you were just acting tough! Don’t strain yourself—lean on me.”
Wrapped in the warmth of her arms, breathing in the scent of rain and sweet soap on her clothes, Roman pressed his face into the crook of her neck.
It was supposed to be a mask to hide the triumphant smirk pulling at his lips—proof that his little act had worked.
But as her arms tightened around him, the victory turned dangerously heavy.
His head swam, his chest tight with a suffocating intensity that had nothing to do with poison, leaving him clinging to her like a man completely at the mercy of a game he thought he was controlling.
“We have to leave. Right now,” Lillian said urgently.
Roman did not move at first.
He let his forehead rest against her shoulder for a second longer than necessary, taking a deep, quiet breath that filled his lungs with her scent.
Clinging to the ridiculous illusion that time had stopped, he slowly tore himself away, swallowed down the tightness in his throat, and gave her an obedient nod as she held him securely.
The sight of it was almost absurd.
His towering figure leaning into her small frame, his good arm draped over her shoulders while she wrapped hers firmly around his waist, supporting him with a determination far greater than her size suggested.
If anyone else had been there, they would have thought the proud Laurent heir had suddenly become astonishingly cooperative and pathetic.
In reality, Roman was having the best evening of his life.
Because every few steps, Lillian would glance back at him.
“Can you walk straight? Do you need to sit down for a second?”
“No… I can manage. Just… don’t let go of me.”
“I won’t,” Lillian reassured.
“Hold on, Roman. Please,” she pleaded, her breath hitching as she picked up her pace, her heart breaking for him.
“Just keep walking. The boundary wall isn’t far.”
“Lils…” Roman let out a pained exhale.
“If my arm goes completely numb… you might have to hold my hand so I don’t lose my balance.”
Lillian did not even hesitate.
Without missing a beat, she firmly intertwined her fingers with his cold ones.
“I’ve got you. Just focus on breathing.”
“I’m trying…” He squeezed her fingers a tiny bit tighter, completely drunk on the sweet victory of her undivided attention.
“Does your vision feel blurry?”
“…A bit,” he lied.
“Everything’s… a little bit dark. Except you.”
“Roman, please don’t start joking right now,” Lillian reprimanded as she carefully navigated them around a fallen basalt boulder.
“If the toxin reaches your heart—”
“It won’t. It just burns every time I move my arm.”
Lillian almost let out a sob of pure guilt.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, if I didn’t throw the rock—”
“Hey,” Roman cut her off softly, his tone dropping the dramatic weakness for a fleeting second as he turned his head to look at her profile in the starlight.
The desperate panic of her expression was so earnest and so tenderly sweet that he almost felt a tiny prickle of guilt for deceiving her.
Almost.
“…Don’t apologize, Lils. You’re keeping me awake.”
Lillian swallowed hard, blinking back the hot sting in her eyes as she adjusted her grip on his waist and hand.
“Okay… We… we’re almost at the stone breach.”
“Lils?”
“What? What is it? Are you feeling worse?”
Roman closed his eyes then, pressing his cheek against the top of her head with a faint, dramatic sigh.
“…If I don’t make it through the night—”
“Shut up!” she snapped, her voice cracking with emotion as she dragged him up the last steep step toward the boundary line.
“Don’t say that! You are going to survive a scratch on your arm if I have to drag you to the infirmary myself!”
Roman had to bite the inside of his cheek so hard he nearly tasted blood just to prevent himself from laughing out loud.
Dying of sheer absurdity felt like a far more lethal threat than whatever poison was currently burning through his veins.
He had bled on battlefields, faced cursed blades, and stared down horrors that tore steel apart like paper, and none of them had ever threatened his sanity.
But Lillian?
Lillian pressing her trembling hand into his, her warm body pinned tight against his side, her panicked voice softly commanding him not to die?
That was the blow that undid him completely.
If a pathetic, minor scratch earned him this, then maybe his survival instinct was a severely overrated concept after all.
Suddenly, a deeply unhinged thought took root in his mind: perhaps he should be more careful about avoiding injuries in the future… or perhaps he should not be so quick to stop them.
To his own shock, the realization did not disturb him in the slightest.
Rather, Roman found himself wondering how many broken bones were worth the warmth of her hand in his.