Celestia sat in her chair with her legs crossed, fingers absently threading through her red hair, her ruby eyes steady on Drazeil.
He was standing exactly where he had been standing since she sat down, looking at her with the expression of soone who still didn’t like the fact that he had a Master now.
"Terms," she said quietly, breaking the silence first because she had decided she was tired of it. "You go first."
Drazeil looked at her for a mont. Then he straightened — the particular straightening of soone shifting from one mode into another — and the temperature in the room dropped by approximately two degrees.
"First," he said. "You cannot wish for anything that directly interferes with my goals. That is non-negotiable and not subject to discussion."
"And what exactly are these goals of yours?"
"Do you really want to know?" He looked at her steadily. "You should be able to figure it out by now."
Celestia put two fingers to her forehead, thinking. What could his goals possibly be? She looked at him — at the cold fury that lived permanently behind his heterochromic eyes, at the centuries of sothing dark and unresolved that radiated off him like heat off a fla — and arrived at the most obvious answer.
"Your goal is to kill all Celestial beings," she said.
"Not only that." Sothing shifted in his expression — brief, controlled. "I want my realm back. The Infernal Realm. What was taken from ."
"Wow," Celestia said, in a tone so dry it could have started a fire.
She was tired. She was genuinely, thoroughly tired — the kind of tired that settled into her bones after a day that had included a Royal Court execution, a grandmother’s reunion, an ancient lamp, a Pact she hadn’t agreed to and a man who had just told her, very calmly, that he intended to end her entire species. All she wanted was for this to conclude so she could sleep.
Although —
Her eyes drifted briefly to his lips before she caught herself.
Not yet, she told herself firmly.
"Is she alright?" Drazeil thought, watching her. I have just inford her of my intention to eliminate her kind and she is sitting there with that expression on her face.
Celestia snapped back to attention.
"But I am also a Celestial being," she said, bringing her eyes back to his face with the focused calm of soone returning to an important point. "Does that an you intend to kill ? Kill your own Master?" She put a deliberate emphasis on the last word — quiet, precise, intentional.
Sothing tightened in his jaw.
"Once I find a way to unbind this Pact," he said, "that is precisely what will happen. So rest assured — for now, you are safe."
"Hmmm." Celestia tilted her head slightly. "Then I will make sure that never happens."
"We shall see about that." Drazeil said.
The corner of her mouth curved.
"I’ve noted your first term," she said. "Next."
His eyes narrowed slightly at the speed of her response — like he had expected an argunt and was mildly disoriented by the absence of one.
"The Pact stays between us," he continued. "You do not tell anyone of its existence. Not your guards. Not your grandmother. No one."
Celestia thought briefly of Angelina and Jake and the way they noticed everything about everything always.
"Fine," she said.
"Every wish beyond your first three carries a price. You agree to the price before I fulfill the wish. No exceptions."
"What kind of price?"
"That depends on the wish."
"That is not a satisfying answer."
"I don’t care," he said flatly. "In public — our dynamic stays private. You do not command . You do not reference the Pact. As far as anyone else is concerned we are simply two people who happen to cross paths."
"And the fifth?"
Sothing moved almost imperceptibly across his expression.
"You do not make wishes designed to use the Pact against ," he said. "The Pact exists between us. It is not a weapon."
Celestia studied him for a mont, then she nodded once.
"All right," she said. "My turn."
Drazeil said nothing. Which she took as permission.
"You cannot harm anyone I consider under my protection," she said. "I don’t care what they have done or what your reasons are. If I have extended protection to soone, that is final."
His jaw tightened. "That is an unreasonable condition."
"It is my term," she said pleasantly.
"Second — you answer my questions honestly. No deflecting. No half truths. No technically accurate responses designed to mislead. If I ask you sothing directly, you answer it directly."
The look he gave her suggested he found this particular term personally offensive on a deep and fundantal level.
"Third," she continued, "you cannot use the Pact against in any way. Not as leverage, not as manipulation, not as a tool. Whatever this is between us —" She gestured loosely at the space between them. "It does not beco a weapon pointed at ."
"Fourth." She t his eyes steadily. "You do not disappear without telling where you are going. I am your Master. I need to be able to reach you."
"I am an ancient King," he said. "Not a —"
"Fourth term," she said again, in exactly the sa tone.
His mouth closed.
"And fifth." She paused. Letting her pause do its work. "You call by my na. Not Celestial being. Not girl. Not any other cold dismissive thing your extensive vocabulary might produce. My na is Celestia. You use it."
The silence that followed was extraordinary in its quality.
Then Drazeil did sothing she did not expect.
He laughed. Not loudly — not the way most people laughed, filling rooms and joyous.
Just a quiet exhale of sothing that was genuinely, reluctantly amused.
The sound of soone who had not expected to find anything funny and was mildly irritated that they did.
"Ordering around, Celestia," he said...
Oh.
The way her na sounded in his voice was entirely unreasonable.
Low and deliberate. It moved through her chest before she could stop it, and her heart did sothing it had absolutely no business doing — beating faster, quicker, louder, like it had suddenly rembered it existed and wanted to make a point of it.
She kept her face perfectly composed.
"I’m your Master, I’m sure I do have the power to order," she replied calmly.
Drazeil looked at her with the expression of soone counting internally to a very large number.
"These terms," he said carefully, "are —"
"Reasonable," she said. "Completely reasonable. More reasonable than yours, I would argue."
"You think so?"
"Yes. They involve basic respect and communication. Practically nothing."
Another silence. The specific silence of soone who has lost an argunt and is in the process of deciding not to acknowledge it.
"Fine," Drazeil said.
"Fine," Celestia agreed.
Neither of them moved. But sothing else in the room did — sothing unspoken, still unresolved, sitting between them with the particular patience of sothing that knew its mont was coming.
"My first wish," Celestia said.
The air shifted imdiately. That particular shift that happened every ti either of them ca near the subject — charged and complicated and not entirely comfortable for either party.
"Does it need to be fulfilled before I can make any other?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "That is the nature of the Pact."
"And I have other wishes I need to make." She looked at him steadily.
"Important ones."
"I am aware."
"So." She looked at him. He looked at her. The space between them was very quiet and very small. "It needs to be fulfilled."
"When you are ready to —"
Celestia stood up.
She crossed the space between them in four steps — unhurried, deliberate, with the calm of soone who had made a decision and was not going to second guess it — and before Drazeil had fully processed that she was moving, she was standing directly in front of him.
Looking up at him.
He looked down at her.
Neither of them spoke.
Then Celestia rose onto her toes, closed the remaining distance between them, and kissed him.
It was not a long kiss. It was not a tentative one either — it was the kiss of soone who had decided to do sothing and was doing it fully, without apology, without hesitation.
Her hand had found the front of his garnt without her quite realizing it, steadying herself, and for exactly three seconds everything including centuries of ancestral enmity ceased to exist entirely.
It felt like magic. The real kind. The kind that didn’t ask permission.
Then she pulled back.
Stepped away.
Smoothed the front of her dress with one hand, composed as anything.
"Wish fulfilled," she said simply.
And turned to go back to her chair.
Drazeil stood exactly where he was.
He did not move. Did not speak. Did not — for the first ti in longer than he could clearly rember —
He did not know what to do with himself.
Sothing had happened in those three seconds that his centuries of careful, absolute, ironclad control had no existing frawork for. Sothing that had moved through him like the crack of a seal — quick, total, and impossible to unfeel.
He breathed. Once. Slowly.
"Strawberries", that scent was more stronger now.
"You seem quite out of breath,"
Celestia observed from her chair, in the tone of soone making a casual remark about the weather.
He said nothing.
"If my kiss affected you that much —" She touched her lips lightly with one finger, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "Would you like another?"
Sothing moved in his expression.
Sothing that would have been dangerous on anyone else’s face and was considerably more dangerous on his. He opened his mouth —
A sound.
Footsteps in the corridor outside. Slow. Deliberate. Unhurried in the way of soone who had no reason to hurry because they were in their own ho and every room in it belonged to them.
Growing closer.
Celestia’s eyes snapped to the door imdiately, sitting upright in her chair, the teasing expression dissolving into sothing considerably more alert.
Drazeil didn’t move, didn’t turn. Simply stood exactly where he was with his hands at his sides and his expression returning to that flat, unreadable thing it did when he had decided the so things were not worth reacting to.
The footsteps stopped outside the door.
And then the door handle moved.
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