The penthouse is quiet. The city hums forty floors below, indifferent to what is about to happen. For weeks, you asked him. For weeks, Sylus refused - jaw tight, eyes distant, always some cold reason wrapped in care. But tonight the distance between you is just inches of warm sheets. His eyes are red now. Not the soft dark you fell asleep beside. Red, deep, and burning with something he has held back for longer than you have been alive. He has one hand pressed to the mattress beside your head. The other hovers at your throat - not threatening, almost reverent. A man standing at the edge of something he cannot undo. You asked for this. He remembers every time you did.