caught red handed

Aether slipped back into the private chambers just before the first gray light touched the horizon.

For one brief, hopeful minute he believed the entire errand had gone unnoticed. The main room was still filled with the soft, tangled shapes of sleeping women. Breathing remained deep and even. He had already started to ease the silver ring deeper into his inner pocket when the absence registered.

Rosaria’s usual place beside the bed was empty.

Yelan’s bedroll near the door was not in use.

Cloud Retainer was nowhere among the sleeping forms.

Hydro ropes moved before he could take a second step.

They rose from the floor and the shadows in smooth, practiced coils — firm without cutting, impossible to shrug off. Within seconds his wrists were bound behind him, ankles lightly tethered, and a final precise loop settled across his mouth, silencing any explanation before he could offer it. The second restraint of the night settled into place with clinical efficiency.

Rosaria stood directly in front of him.

(https://im.ge/i/QMHHJNx)
(artist: vv55)

Her expression was stripped of every trace of playfulness or residual post-festival softness. Pure, cold fury sat in her eyes. Behind her, Yelan watched with arms folded and an unreadable but clearly disapproving stillness. Cloud Retainer’s gaze carried the particular disappointment of an adeptus who had expected better judgment.

Rosaria’s voice stayed low so she would not wake the others, but every word landed like a blade.

“You absolute fucking idiot. You wait until every single one of us is finally asleep after days of fighting, chasing, and keeping you alive, and then you sneak out alone in the middle of the night. Do you have any idea what went through my head when I reached for you and found an empty bed? Again?”

She slammed her fist into the wall beside his head hard enough to leave a shallow crack in the plaster. The impact made the hydro ropes creak. Aether held perfectly still. He was grateful, not for the first time, that her polearm was still propped on the far side of the room.

“We just got you back from a Harbinger who kept you for three days. Your neck still has the ghost of that bruise. And the first chance you get, you vanish without a word. Reckless doesn’t even begin to cover it. I ought to—”

Another impact against the wall, closer this time. Dust sifted down. She never struck him — the control held by the thinnest margin — but the message was unmistakable. Yelan’s rope across his mouth remained firmly in place, leaving him unable to offer the half-truths or reassurances already forming behind his teeth.

They did not know about the dungeon.

They did not know about the Mirror Maiden.

If Rosaria had possessed even a rough direction, Aether was certain the next blow would not have been reserved for the wall.

The hydro rope across Aether’s mouth finally loosened enough for speech just as the rest of the pride began to stir.

Groggy voices, the rustle of sheets, soft confused questions about the noise — none of it mattered. Not a single woman made any move to intervene. The collective mood was clear: whatever Rosaria was about to deliver, the Traveler had earned it. They watched from their bedrolls with the resigned interest of people who had already decided the outcome was justified.

Aether knew better than to offer shallow excuses.

Downplaying the risk, claiming it had been “quick” or “safe,” would only feed the fire currently burning behind Rosaria’s eyes. She was still talking, voice rising in tight, furious increments — every sentence circling back to the kidnapping, the three days, the empty bed, the sheer stupidity of leaving without a word. Her hand had already lifted, open-palmed, the trajectory obvious.

He needed something better than words.

He twisted hard against the remaining hydro restraints, straining toward the inner pocket where the silver ring sat. The ropes held. Rosaria’s voice climbed another notch. The slap was coming.

Cloud Retainer’s gaze flicked to the way his bound hands kept fighting toward his chest. She murmured a single quiet observation to Yelan. The hydro constructs loosened by a precise, deliberate fraction — just enough.

Aether’s fingers closed around the ring and tore it free.

He thrust it up between them at the exact moment Rosaria’s hand began its downward arc.

The sharp-cut Cryo-blue stone caught the first gray morning light and flashed directly in front of her eyes.

Rosaria froze mid-swing.

The open palm stopped a finger’s width from his cheek. All the gathered momentum of her rage visibly drained out of her shoulders, her arm, her face. She stared at the simple silver band and the cold, clear stone as if the rest of the room had ceased to exist. The fury did not vanish completely — the worry and the anger still sat underneath — but the immediate violence collapsed under the weight of what he was holding out to her while still half-braced for the hit like a child who knew he deserved it.

Varesa and Chasca completely failed to read the room.

The moment the silver ring with its sharp Cryo-blue stone appeared between Aether and Rosaria, both women lit up and started cheering like they had just witnessed a second proposal. Varesa clapped her hands together with a bright, oblivious “Aww!” while Chasca actually whooped, still half-asleep and fully convinced the furious tension in the air was just dramatic romance.

Aether kept the ring raised between himself and Rosaria like a tiny, glittering shield. His shoulders stayed braced for impact even after the slap had frozen mid-air. The rest of the pride watched in various states of amusement and residual tension as the two densest members of the group continued celebrating in the background.

Yelan exhaled through her nose, rolled her eyes, and flicked her fingers. The remaining hydro ropes dissolved into mist. She turned without comment and walked back to her corner of the room, posture loose, but the faint drop in her shoulders betrayed clear relief that the situation had shifted away from actual violence.

Rosaria stood in the middle of the emotional wreckage she had become.

One second her eyes were still bright with leftover fury; the next they softened as they focused properly on the ring. She reached out, took it carefully from Aether’s fingers, and turned it so the pale blue stone caught the growing morning light.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, voice rough. The anger hadn’t left, but something warmer had shoved its way in beside it.
“Really. It suits better than the first one.”
She slid it onto her finger, flexed her hand once, then immediately pointed the same finger at his chest.
“You’re still an idiot. A reckless, selfish, vanishing-in-the-middle-of-the-night idiot. This doesn’t erase the fact that I woke up to an empty bed again after everything that just happened.”

She stepped closer, grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him down into a hard, brief kiss that tasted like both gratitude and residual rage. When she broke it she kept her forehead against his and kept going, the two emotions tumbling out one after another without any attempt to reconcile them.

“Thank you for replacing it."

"I love it."

"I’m still furious with you."

"Don’t you ever do that again."

"It’s perfect."

"I’m going to make you regret scaring me like that for at least a week.”

Behind them Varesa and Chasca were still quietly celebrating the “proposal,” completely missing the layered threat woven through every soft word. The rest of the pride, now fully awake, simply watched their head fiancée oscillate between genuine happiness and open promises of future retribution while Aether stood there and took every swing of the emotional pendulum he had earned.