[edited: 05/08/2017]

Remy could hear that Hilda was home when she emerged from her bedroom with a clean shirt on—it had been left folded on the edge of her bed, most likely by Maksim—for the shrill voice emanating down the corridor certainly wasn't Maksim's or Annika's. She sighed, preparing herself for whatever it was that she was arguing about now, and bravely stepped into the kitchen.

Maksim was stood against the counter in almost the same position that Remy had seen him in last, though now his posture was tense, whilst Hilda paced around the kitchen with her hands flying around erratically. Her words echoed off the glass walls of the kitchen and began to hurt Remy's ears.

"It seems to me like you do not want to find your brother at all!" she was saying in an icy tone. "You hid everything from me as though you did not want me to find him either! Why, Maksim?"

Maksim sighed and ran a hand through his red hair before replying. "Do you honestly think that he can just return to light magic and we can all be a happy family again? He is evil, Mother, whether you care to admit it or not. Look at what he did to Remy!"

Upon being mentioned, she cleared her throat and took a few cautious steps into the room. "Would you like some privacy?"

"Actually, no," Hilda said rather surprisingly, a strange smirk that was neither friendly nor malicious curving her dark red lips. "I have been meaning to talk to you about the key, actually."

Remy clutched her necklace instinctively and frowned. Even now, after having had her life threatened because of it, the feel of the cold metal against her palm provided her with a sense of comfort. "Did you come up with an idea, then, to lure them to it?"

"Yes, though it is not a very good one, I must admit."

Maksim rolled his eyes. "That is not filling me with much confidence, Mother."

"The Council agreed that in order for the Dark Ones to return, they must think of you as an easy target." Remy gulped instinctively, fear spreading like a fast and deadly disease, starting from the pit of her stomach and seeping into her lungs, her heart, her throat as she remembered the pain she had endured last time she had encountered Ackmard. "This means you will live here like any normal witch. You will befriend a few of the locals, venture out into Astracia, do whatever it is you wish as long as you can easily be found." 

"And then what? What about when they attack and she is in the middle of it? What about when they hurt her to get the key?" Maksim questioned, and he sounded just as he did during the trial yesterday: angry, incredibly so.

Remy wanted to say something, but couldn't. Hilda was already speaking over her. "We will make sure to always have a few warlocks keeping an eye on her. I am sure that you will not let her out of your sight very easily, and a few warlocks at the Central Hall have volunteered their assistance. They are already preparing themselves for an attack. If the Dark Ones come, they will be there in minutes."

"Do you think that makes very much difference?" Remy squeezed her eyes shut as Maksim's voice rose. She was beginning to get a headache, and she was panicking about the dangers of the plan, even though she had gotten herself into this mess by saying that she would help in the first place. "Dark magic is more powerful than light. Elthar made me bleed using his, and my brother can disappear from one place to another whenever he likes. Do you honestly think that having a few warlocks around who care nothing for Remy and her safety could save her from them?"

"I think that this is the best chance we have at getting my son back," Hilda snapped back, equally as unkindly. "I think that your emotions are clouding your judgement, just as they always have."

"Yes, you are right. How dare I care about an innocent person who does not deserve to get mixed up in this? I am despicable. Treacherous, even."

Hilda's eyes narrowed. "You brought her here, and because of that, this is your burden to bear."

Remy felt as though she was watching a tennis match, one where the ball would be hit back and forth a thousand times without either player ever getting any closer to winning. She had experienced this a million times at home, with her brothers and sisters, who she had been trying so hard not to think about recently. She squeezed her eyes shut at the wave of homesickness and the dull ache behind her eyes. The shouts were too loud for her sensitive ears, and all that she wanted was a bit of peace and quiet, so she yelled with as much strength as she could muster, "Enough! Both of you!"

The pair looked at her in bewilderment as though they had forgotten about her altogether. In the sudden silence, she took the opportunity to continue.

"All the two of you ever do is argue, and you're both so stubborn that it's impossible for either of you to win." She inhaled and bit her lip, feeling drained of any energy that she had woken up with this morning. "If you're not careful, Hilda, you're going to lose another one of your sons."

"Yes, well, I do not believe that would be all that tragic for her, I am afraid," muttered Maksim, causing Hilda to open her mouth in an attempt to fight back.

"Stop!" shouted Remy again before she could. "Maksim, you have to stop arguing about this. You don't care if I'm hurt anyway, and I want to do this. What you say can't change that. You may as well agree to it."

"Well, I do not agree to it, Remy, and neither should you!" He marched towards her until he was only inches away, until she could feel the rage rolling off him in waves. Her neck ached as she looked up at him, flinching at the loudness of his words. "You should not be here in the first place, let alone saving everybody else's life by sacrificing your own."

"That is her decision to make!" Hilda interjected and of course, the argument began again.

Remy sighed and slipped back into the hall unnoticed. Her head was pounding, tiredness sweeping over her body despite the fact that she had slept well last night. She could not bear another moment in that kitchen, stuck in an argument between the two of them, so she decided to search the house for a quiet room instead.

She found one above a flight of stairs. It was a room that was able to remind her of how to breathe, one that she collapsed into in relief and exhaustion. It was almost like a balcony, though it was surrounded by glass, and it provided her with the view of the whole of Astracia, including the brilliant green fields behind it where wild flowers grew and snowdust hovered.

She stayed there, gazing out into a foreign world, for a rather long time.

* * *

It had taken Maksim hours to find Remy—the house was a large place with many rooms and corridors—and he was glad to finally locate her on the balcony of the house, just as the sun was ready to set. It shone over Astracia like a ball of glowing fire that could never be extinguished, its orange hue bleeding into the pink sky like watercolours on a canvas.

He didn't let her know he was there at first, not when she didn't notice him. He simply watched, wondering how she could stand so still for so long without growing restless or bored. It was strange, he thought, or rather, she was strange; she had such a fervent spirit, one that, like fire, would leave a permanent scar on the world, yet there was always an unnatural peacefulness underneath that Maksim still had not been able to find in himself after four hundred years of living. He had noticed it last night, when she had sat in front of Maksim's window for hours without saying a word, and he noticed it again now. It was as though she was quite content to sit back and let the universe be. She did not feel the need to change the world the way most mortals did. It was nice, he thought. Her calmness was contagious, and it put Maksim at ease—something that did not occur very often.

He was about to clear his throat when she spoke. "Stop staring at me."

He smirked and stepped forward so that he could see his reflection just behind hers in the window pane. "And you say that you are just a mortal."

"Actually, I think it's you who says that." She turned around to him so that he could see her properly. She looked tired, he thought instantly, with dark circles under her eyes and her complexion lacking any real colour. He hadn't really thought about how difficult everything that had happened yesterday must have been for her, not since he had left her in the medical wing. He wished he had considered her more now.

"How long have you been standing here?"

"Since I left you and your mother to shout at each other in private," she responded, her eyebrows knitted together. "I had a headache."

"I'm..." Sorry, he wanted to say, but stopped himself before he could. Maksim was not one to apologise, not ever. He refused to allow himself to change now, and he refused a mortal girl to be the cause of it. "You should have said. I could have used my magic to heal it."

"You were a little busy with your family conflict. I didn't want to disturb you." She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest, her hands, covered entirely by a shirt that was too long for her, cupping her elbows. "Besides, it wasn't worth wasting your magic on."

"Perhaps not, but I have an unlimited supply, as long as I do not use too much in too small a time" he said matter-of-factly, and sat down on the white sofa against the back wall. After a moment, Remy did the same. "I might as well make the most of it."

Instead of responding, she simply tucked her knees up to her chest and gazed at something past the window, and past the sky, and past this world entirely. He found himself wishing he was there with her, wherever there was, but quickly dismissed the thought. "Do you think my family has noticed I'm gone? It's been a few days, now. They might be getting worried."

"It has been weeks in the Mortal World. Time passes differently here than it does there. I suppose by now they suspect you are either missing or dead."

She made a strangled sound of disapproval, and her grey eyes narrowed into slits. "Great. That's very reassuring."

Maksim, upon realising that perhaps he had been a little bit too honest, grimaced. "I should not have said that. I have been told that I am not very good at thinking about the things I say before I say them."

"I wouldn't have noticed," she said sarcastically, but without much conviction.

The room lit up suddenly with a flash of gold as the sun began its descent along the horizon. Remy looked curiously at the source of the sudden light, shadows and shards of colour passing over her face as she did, and then stood up to take her place back at the window. She was only a mere silhouette now, with the curvy outline of her body causing a break in the sun's rays.

"I've never seen that happen before," she said, and it took him a moment to realise what she meant, for he was too rapt in his own view.

He made his way to stand beside her before he responded. "It is called a Flare. It only happens every once in a while, when the sun is so close that the magic floating through Refilyn's air interacts with its rays."

"It's beautiful," she breathed, and she was right in saying so. The Flare had caused fragments of red to seep into the pink and orange sky, and flecks of snowdust floated around the city so that it caused a sort of haze that one might easily get lost in. Maksim could even see the forest where his lake belonged if he looked carefully enough, with its golden leaves glittering as though begging to be noticed and visited.

Still, he found his gaze falling back to her, where it seemed to linger an awful lot these days. She was so beautiful that Maksim thought she belonged to the vibrant sunset in front of her. Her skin glowed in the same way that the sky did, and her eyes held the reflections of the sun's rays so that her pupils were no longer black, but orange. Her grey irises had turned silver, reminding him of the surface of his lake when the sunlight was particularly bright. She did not belong here, he thought, with him. She belonged up there, in the sky, where all of the spectacular things were. She belonged with the sun and the moon, the stars, and the infinite galaxy. She belonged with the sunset. How lucky he was that she was stood beside him instead.

He cleared his throat when he realised that he had been staring, and crossed his arms behind his back casually. He hoped she hadn't noticed. She didn't appear to have.

"I think that it was Annika," she started suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen between them both, "who told the Principle Warlock about me. I think she took me to the tavern when you left to find your brother because she knew that people would see me and report me."

"Annika?" He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I do not think she would do anything so malicious. I remember, once, she cried for days because she accidentally trod on her cat's tail."

Remy scoffed as her expression contorted into one of disgust. "Do you honestly buy her innocent act? I thought you were a little more perceptive than that, Max."

There it was again, he thought, her calling him 'Max' the way that only she could—and there he was again, enjoying the way it fell from her lips so naturally. He tried to ignore it and concentrate on the conversation, which was becoming increasingly difficult. "It is not an act, unfortunately. She has always been nauseatingly..." He struggled to think of a word, but Remy seemed to have one of her own.

"False?" she questioned with pursed lips.

"Kind, I suppose," Maksim countered. "She would not put any one in harm's way, not even you. It seems that the only thing she wishes to accomplish is marrying me. There is no reason why she would want to report you to the Council."

"Fine, maybe she didn't do it maliciously," Remy suggested with a shrug. "Maybe she let it slip to her father that I was here. Whatever it is, I don't trust her."

"I think that perhaps you are a little too paranoid."

"And I think that perhaps you have been blind-sided by her owl eyes and irritatingly high-pitched voice."

Maksim frowned at Remy's sudden hostility with a swift tilt of his head. "If I did not know any better, I would say you were jealous."

"Yes, I'm jealous." She rolled her eyes dramatically. "I've always wanted to be as irritating as her."

"In that case, your wish has been fulfilled," he teased, and Remy simply gave him a look of disapproval in response. "You have nothing to worry about regarding Annika. My brother, on the other hand..."

"Didn't you know?" She feigned shock, and even as the sun set, he could see her personality coming to life again, her cheeks gaining back their colour. He felt relieved knowing that perhaps she was feeling a little better. "Psychopathic pantomime villains are my forte."

"Well, then you are in luck, because my brother is as villainous as they come." He was joking even when the feeling of dread filled the pit of his stomach at the thought of Remy facing his brother again. "Perhaps when you end up facing his wrath I can tell you I told you so."

"I have no doubt you will."

"Then why are you doing this? Why not let myself and the Council handle it?"

She looked at him steadily, most likely weighing up her answers. "Why not?" she answered finally, as though it was that simple. "I have very little to lose."

Maksim had to suppress his anger. "Do all you mortals have a death wish?"

"No," she retorted, "just the wonderful ones like myself."

"Yes, well, wonderful is certainly one way to describe it," he muttered under his breath.

Looking out onto Astracia, he wondered when it was that it had gotten so dark. The sky was tinged with purple now, a signal that the night was falling, and shadows lurked between the buildings below him. Only a small wisp of orange was left of the sunset. Even so, Remy still found it mesmerising, or at least, that's what Maksim supposed from the way her eyes glazed over distantly.

"What are the sunsets like, where you are from?" he asked suddenly, his tone thoughtful. He had never been curious of the Mortal World before, but he could not help himself now. He wanted to know more about Remy, perhaps even without realising it. He wanted to discover everything about her.

Remy looked surprised that he was paying an interest, but answered anyway. "They're like yours I suppose, only duller. A lot of the time, they're hidden behind the clouds, so I don't get to see them every night."

"Clouds?" Maksim had heard the word before, but had never really seen one in his own world.

"I guess you don't have them here. They're grey, or sometimes white, and fluffy. They float in our sky, but we have that many that you can't separate one from the other most of the time."

"Do you miss them?" The question that he had really wanted to ask was 'do you want to go home?' but he was not sure he had the courage to hear the answer.

"I don't know. I feel like that world is so far away now that I can barely touch it. I try not to think about it too much." There was a sadness that seemed to encase her, increasing each time she let out a breath until it seemed to spread onto his own person.

"I wish that I could make you safe again," he whispered, almost to himself. "I wish that I hadn't made your life so much more difficult than it has to be."

"You said in the trial that you would do it again if you had to." Her voice was lowered too, as though she was too afraid to say the words, though Maksim had never known an instant where Remy was too afraid to say anything.

"Did I? I must have been delirious from my night in the cells." He smiled, and somehow, without knowing how, he had ended up only a few inches away from her so that she had to look up at him from beneath her eyelashes to meet his gaze.

A look of disappointment flashed across her face, and Maksim exhaled with only a slightly ragged breath.

"I would," he said finally. "I would always choose to save you."

He meant it, too. No matter how much more stressful Remy had made things, he would always choose to live with her than without her. He would always want her here, which was stupid of him, really; eventually, the portals would open and she would have to go back to her own world. He just wasn't quite ready to send her back through them yet.

And then, as though he had been transported to a new and strange setting where nothing was how it should be, he broke himself out of his own daze and realised what he was doing, how close he was to her, so close that they were almost touching. He stepped back and inhaled, pursing his lips. She seemed to realise that something had changed in him, because she did the same.

"It is late," he said in the flattest voice he could muster. "You should rest."

She nodded, spared him one last glance, and left, her shoes squeaking against the floor as she did.

The room felt oddly colder after she had shut the door behind her.

AN: I kinda like this chapter but I'm not sure if it's too romantic too early on or whether the previous chapters have built up to this so that it makes sense for it to happen? Let me know please please please

also i'm #637 in fantasy oh my god thank you I know it's not much but it is to me so thank you!!

dedicated to GetYourGoat because she always has lovely things to say about Spellbound and her own book, Treeline, is so good!