The rain in Old Town didn’t fall politely — it slammed against cobblestones, hissed down tiled roofs, and turned the gutters into rivers.

Aurelius kicked his board up with one hand, breath sharp in his chest. The wheels still dripped water, scattering arcs across the street. He tugged his hood lower, not because he was cold — but because he didn’t feel like being recognized.

Spire “internship” could wait. Let Elias fume. Let Father scowl. Let the whole tower hunt him down if they cared so much.

Tonight, he just wanted to breathe.

He spotted the glow first — a shop window spilling warm light across the rain-slick street. Bouquets lined the glass, droplets sliding down between carnations and roses. A wooden sign read DALMIRA FLOWERS in peeling gold paint.

He hovered outside, debating. Then a voice broke the rain.

“Hey. Don’t just stand there like a stray cat — you’ll get sick.”

Aurelius turned.

A girl in a school uniform, hair tied back with a ribbon, was fiddling with the lock on the shop door. She wore an apron over her skirt, bag slung carelessly on one shoulder. Her braid was soaked, clinging to her cheek. She looked young — fifteen, maybe.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Well? You skating or swimming?”

Aurelius blinked, then smirked despite himself.

“Maybe both.”

She snorted, clearly unimpressed.

“Idiot. Come inside before you drip all over the roses.”

Without waiting, she pushed the door open, bell chiming overhead.

For a moment, Aurelius stayed in the rain, staring at the little shop’s warm interior — shelves of blooms, faint scent of soil and petals. Ordinary. Peaceful. A corner of Bastovar untouched by Spire steel or Braun shadows.

Then he stepped in.

The door shut, muting the storm. His hood dripped onto the welcome mat, and the girl shoved a towel at his chest.

“Dry off. Don’t touch anything expensive.”

Aurelius grinned, taking the towel.

“Do I look like a thief to you?”

She glanced him up and down — tall, too polished for Old Town, still carrying that aura no disguise could kill.

“…You look like trouble.”

For the first time that day, Aurelius laughed.

Aurelius rubbed the towel through his hair, drops pattering on the wooden floor. The shop smelled faintly of roses and damp earth, like summer caught in a jar. He wasn’t used to places like this — soft, unguarded, without metal walls or Vestal eyes.

The girl — Amelia, he caught from a nametag half-hanging off her apron — moved behind the counter, dropping her schoolbag with a thud. She pulled out homework, set it aside, and only then looked back at him.

“So,” she said, leaning on the counter, “you gonna buy something, or just stand there steaming like a broken radiator?”

Aurelius smirked. “Maybe I’ll buy. Depends if you’ve got anything good.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s a flower shop. Not a black market.”

He laughed, stepping closer to the displays. Bouquets in neat wraps, vases full of lilies, daisies, carnations. He had no idea what any of them meant. He pointed at the biggest bundle of white lilies.

“These. Perfect.”

Amelia stared at him. Then at the lilies. Then back at him.

“…Those are for funerals.”

Aurelius blinked. “…Funerals?”

“Yeah,” she said dryly, picking one up and shoving it toward him.

“So unless you’re heading to a burial, you just picked the worst possible ‘gift.’”

For the first time, he felt heat creep up his neck. “I was—” he cleared his throat, “—thinking for a birthday.”

Amelia burst out laughing, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Oh my god. Who shows up to a birthday with funeral lilies?”

Aurelius tried to salvage his pride, shrugging.

“Maybe I like being unpredictable.”

“Or you’re clueless.” She smirked, then spun toward another shelf.

“Here. Sunflowers. Happy, simple, not creepy.”

She pressed the bouquet into his hands before he could protest. Her fingers were warm, faintly smelling of soil.

Aurelius glanced at the flowers, then at her. The storm raged outside, but here, in this little shop, he felt strangely… caught.

He grinned. “Guess I owe you one, florist.”

“You owe me twenty credits,” Amelia shot back, already scribbling in her notebook.

And for the first time in a long while, Aurelius didn’t feel like running.

...----------------...

The rain was merciless that night, beating down like the city itself wanted to wash Old Town away. Amelia hunched her shoulders as she fumbled with the lock, braid plastered to her neck. The shop smelled of wet soil and wilted carnations — cozy, but weary, like she felt after school and a double shift.

She heard the wheels first. The slick whir of a skateboard cutting through puddles. She glanced up, and there he was — some boy standing in the rain like he owned it, hood low, board tucked under his arm, dripping like a stray dog too proud to admit it was lost.

He didn’t belong here. That was obvious in a second. Too tall, too polished, too… sharp around the edges.

Not Old Town. Not hers.

“Hey,” she called over the storm. “Don’t just stand there like a stray cat — you’ll get sick.”

When he turned, she caught his eyes under the hood. Strange. Bright. The kind of gaze that didn’t fit on the corner of Dalmira Flowers.

He smirked when she teased him. She rolled her eyes, pretending not to notice the way her chest skipped. Boys like him were trouble. Always.

Inside, the bell chimed warm against the storm’s roar. She set down her schoolbag, apron already dusted with pollen, and tried to ignore the drip-drip-drip of his hood as he hovered by the door. The towel practically jumped into her hand before she even thought about it — habit, really. She’d grown up keeping customers dry, comfortable, welcome.

He grinned when she shoved it at him. Too easy with that smile. Too practiced. She sniffed.

“You look like trouble,” she muttered, almost to herself.

He laughed — not offended, just… alive. And for some reason, it filled the little shop more than the flowers did.

She tried to lose herself in routine. Bag down. Homework out. Ink-stained pages waiting. But his presence pulled at her like static. So she threw a wall up the only way she knew how: sarcasm.

“So,” she said, pen tapping the counter, “you gonna buy something, or just stand there steaming like a broken radiator?”

When he picked the lilies, she almost choked.

Funeral lilies. For a birthday.

The sheer ridiculousness cracked her guard before she could stop it. Laughter burst out of her, sharp and sudden, shaking the tiredness off her shoulders.

For a moment she wasn’t

Amelia-who-had-to-close-shop, Amelia-who-kept-the-bills-paid, Amelia-who-grew-up-too-fast.

She was just a girl laughing at a clueless boy.

“Sunflowers,” she told him, voice lighter now, pressing the bouquet into his big, awkward hands. His fingers brushed hers, warm despite the rain.

She caught herself staring, then busied with scribbling the receipt, cheeks warm for reasons that had nothing to do with the storm.

He said something about owing her one. She shot back without missing a beat:

“You owe me twenty credits.”

It was safer, keeping him in that box. A customer. A stranger. Trouble.

But when she glanced up, the storm roaring beyond the window, she saw him still there — really there — like the rain couldn’t wash him away.

And something in her chest whispered this was not the last time he’d step into her little shop.

...----------------...

The skateboard wheels whispered over the polished alloy floor as Aurelius kicked them up and carried the board under one arm. Rain still clung to his jacket, dripping quietly on the black obsidian tiles of the entrance.

ELI’s voice hummed through the air, warm and toneless all at once.

ELI: Welcome back, Legacy.

The lights shifted subtly, recognizing his biometrics. The manor always seemed to breathe when he returned.

He padded into the common room, the soft glow of emotion-responsive lamps reflecting off glass walls. His mother was there, seated with the calm elegance that only she possessed, golden eyes luminous in the dim light.

Aurelius hesitated for only a second, then pulled the wrapped bouquet from behind his back. Sunflowers, bright even against the fortress’s cold lines.

“Mom,” he said simply, offering them to her.

Lucretia’s face softened, a rare warmth brightening her timeless features. She accepted the bouquet as though it were something sacred. “Beautiful,” she whispered, fingertips grazing his cheek briefly.

“Thank you, my son.”

At the dining table, Maximus sat with one elbow resting on polished steel, half a file left open beside him. He studied Aurelius in silence for a moment, grey eyes glinting faintly red in the low light. The corner of his mouth curved in the smallest of smirks.

Aurelius shifted. “Dad. You’re not mad?”

Maximus leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “You would be surprised,” he said quietly, “if I told you what I did when I was your age.”

Aurelius blinked, brows pulling together. “Huh?”

But Maximus only let the smirk linger, gaze steady. Then his tone hardened a fraction.

“Just… don’t make your mother worry.”

Aurelius dropped his eyes to the floor, the weight of the manor pressing in. He nodded.

“Okay.”

Aurelius sank onto the edge of the sofa, skateboard balanced across his knees. The storm’s rhythm against the glass was steady, like a thousand muted drums. He could feel both of their gazes—his mother’s warmth, his father’s steady iron—holding him in the strange gravity of the room.

ELI’s voice chimed softly again, as though sensing the tension.

> ELI: Would you like me to bring up the fire wall, Legacy? <

Aurelius exhaled, rubbing a hand over his damp hair. “Yeah. Sure.”

The glass shimmered faintly, darkening at the edges as polarized panels slid into place. The outside storm dulled to a muted haze, leaving the room cocooned in amber and steel.

Lucretia rose with the bouquet, gliding toward the small alcove where she kept her vases.

“Your father is not angry, Aurelius. But he has always hidden his concern in strange ways.

” Her golden eyes flicked toward Maximus knowingly.

Maximus’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. Instead, he closed the file before him with deliberate calm and folded his hands. The subtle shift of his weight was more telling than words.

Aurelius tilted his head.

“So… you really did things worse than skating down the Bastovar bridge rails?”

That earned a laugh from Lucretia, quiet and unexpected. Maximus’s smirk returned, this time edged with something sharper—memory.

“Let’s just say,” he murmured, “the cliffside guards were not fond of Braun boys even then.”

Aurelius blinked, stunned.

“Enough,” Maximus interrupted smoothly, though the faint gleam in his eyes betrayed amusement. He leaned forward, steepling his fingers.

“You’re not me. You don’t need to be.”

For a heartbeat, the air between them was heavy—iron discipline clashing with restless youth. But then Lucretia set the sunflowers in their vase, the yellow petals blazing like small suns against the fortress’s cold walls.

Her presence softened everything, threading a bridge of gold between father and son.

“Come,” she said gently, brushing Aurelius’s hair from his forehead.

“The storm will pass. And tomorrow will ask for all of us again.”

Aurelius leaned into her touch before pulling away, his throat tight. He caught his father’s gaze one last time. The silence stretched, but Aurelius thought—just for a second—he saw something flicker there. Not smirk, not command. Something else.

And then the manor breathed again.

The storm still pounded against the glass walls, but inside Braun Manor the air was suspended — a fortress of silence, love, and secrets.

...----------------...