Yea I Know Thank You Darling 🙃🙃

passages that make me want to hit Xichen with a steel chair

Cut off the bad roots

maybe this is just me idk

god gives his coolest girlfriends to his most loser reddit bros

Cutie 🥰

please understand i am not booping you gently on the forehead. i am smacking your ass, it is audible and there is JIGGLING

he is perfect to me

“Are you the witch who turned eleven princes into swans?”

The old woman stared at the figure on the front step of her cottage and considered her options. It was the kind of question usually backed up by a mob with meaningful torches, and it was the kind of question she tried to avoid.

Coming from a single dusty, tired housewife, it should’ve held no terrors.

“You a cop?”

The housewife twisted the hem of her apron. “No,” she muttered. “I’m a swan.”

A raven croaked somewhere in the woods. Wind whispered in the autumn leaves.

Then: “I think I can guess,” the old woman said slowly. “Husband stole your swan skin and forced you to marry him?”

A nod.

“And you can’t turn back into a swan until you find your skin again.”

A nod.

“But I reckon he’s hidden it, or burned it, or keeps it locked up so you can’t touch it.”

A tiny, miserable nod.

“And then you hear that old Granny Rothbart who lives out in the woods is really a batty old witch whose father taught her how to turn princes into swans,” the old woman sighed. “And you think, ‘Hey, stuff the old skin, I can just turn into a swan again this way.’

“But even if that was true – which I haven’t said if it is or if it isn’t – I’d say that I can only do it to make people miserable. I’m an awful person. I can’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I have no goodness. I can’t use magic to make you feel better. I only wish I could.”

Another pause. “If I was a witch,” she added.

The housewife chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she drew herself up and, for the first time, looked the old woman in the eyes.

“Can you do it to make my husband miserable?”

The old woman considered her options. Then she pulled the wand out from the umbrella stand by the door. It was long, and silver, and a tiny glass swan with open wings stood perched on the tip.

“I can work with that,” said the witch.

Nathan stands at his left. Mary stands at his right.

Neil doesn’t turn to look at them, but he can feel them there—one carved into his ribs, the other burned into his skin.

He is made of them.

Of his father’s brutality, his mother’s desperation. Of bruises layered over bruises, of fists and sharp words and the lesson that pain was the only thing he could count on.

Nathan’s voice is smooth, proud, as it murmurs in his ear.

"You were built for more than this, Nathaniel."

Mary’s whisper is sharp, urgent, dripping with every frantic mile they ever ran.

"You don’t understand what it means to survive."

Nathan had tried to shape him into something ruthless. Mary had tried to strip him down to something weightless.

And neither of them had ever asked what he wanted to be.

Neil closes his eyes.

Nathan’s presence is heavy, all iron and control and the scent of blood that will never wash away.

Mary’s is lighter, but just as cruel—a ghost that lingers, a reminder that even love can leave bruises.

They will always be here.

Because Neil is made of them.

Of a father who saw him as a tool, and a mother who saw him as a liability.

Of a life spent running, and a body full of evidence that he was never meant to survive this long.

His shoulders ache under the weight of them.

And no matter how far he goes, they will never leave.