Her body’s moving before she can think.

“Prin- shesh?!”

Aster’s clamped her hands onto his face, his cheeks squished between her palms. “Either I’m dreaming,” she mutters to herself with an experimental press. “Or ghosts are a lot warmer than I thought they’d be.”

“You callinf me a ghossh, prinshesh? Donf go killinh me off sho eashily!”

“Well you might as well have been dead; I haven’t seen you in a year!” Aster administers a vengeful squish to his face. “What are you doing here, Damien?”

“Vishitinh you?” Even at Aster’s mercy and hanging upside down, he still manages to look disdainful. “Duh.”

“You know what I-“ A chill brushes over her bare arms, the sleeves of her nightgown pooled at her elbows. It’s enough to remind her that they’re still on her balcony, in plain sight of anyone who could possibly be passing by. Hastily, she releases Damien’s cheeks to reach for his shirt, hands closing around his collar to yank him abruptly into her room.

By the time she’s closed the doors, Damien’s feet are back on the ground, expression mildly bemused. “Eager, are we?” He mutters as he fixes his clothes.

“You.” Aster points an accusatory finger at him. “How did you get in?”

“Get in what?”

“The palace!”

Damien shrugs, nonchalant. “I have my ways.”

“Damien Nox.”

He grins at her slyly, circling around her to collapse onto her study chair. “Would you believe me if I told you that I work for the royal palace now?”

Aster frowns. “You? As if-“

She pauses, the thought hitting her like an epiphany. “No,” she says incredulously, because only so many miracles can occur in a single night. “No way.”

“Oh, yes way,” Damien counters, like he can read her mind. His face is insufferably smug.

“You?” She can’t keep the disbelief out of her voice. “You’re the royal mage’s apprentice?”

Damien claps. “Correct! Someone get this girl a cookie!”

A million thoughts are racing through Aster’s head. She manages to settle on one.

“How did that even happen?”

Damien doesn’t bother to answer immediately. Instead, he beckons for her to come closer.

Aster quirks an unamused eyebrow at him. But still she obliges, perching herself on the edge of her desk so she can face him.

“Well then,” Damien begins once she’s settled. “Where should I start?”

Easy.

“Where did you go after leaving the estate?” She asks.

It’s only for a second, but Aster catches it anyway: the way his easygoing smile falters, flickering into something more desolate.

He shrugs. “Nowhere, really,” he says, expression smoothing out into his default lazy grin. “After your old man kicked me out, I fell back on my old habits. You know, wandering around the woods, only dropping in on a town or village if I ran out of food. I didn’t have a destination, really, much less a clue about where I was most of the time. I just… kept walking.”

The crackling of her fireplace reaches into the study, snapping away at the silence. Damien’s face is untouched by its glow, features just barely limned by the light that peeks past his silhouette.

“Then one day,” he continues. “While I was in some village to pick up supplies, I noticed a commotion in front of one of the buildings. You should’ve seen the line streaming out the door, it’s like the whole village was clamouring to see what was going on inside; people were literally pressing themselves against the windows, just so they could get a glimpse. Honestly, the whole thing felt a little bizarre, so I was itching to get my stuff and hightail it out of there. But just as I was passing by the building, I found myself freezing. It was faint, but I could sense it- traces of magic.”

Aster finds herself leaning in, completely hooked.

“So now, I had to see what’s going on,” Damien continues wryly. “But there’s no way I was getting through that insane crowd. Not the normal way, at least."

“Ooh,” Aster cuts in. “Let me guess, you turned into… a lizard?”

“Oh, that could’ve worked too actually. But no, I opted for a spider at that time.”

“Really? I’m surprised you didn’t get trampled on.”

“This is me we’re talking about,” Damien scoffs, as Aster rolls her eyes. “It's going to take more than a measly crowd of people to do me in. But anyway, after I made my way past the crowd, I managed to trace the source of the magic to the person at the very front of the room. It was a guy, who seemed to be in the middle of some kind of presentation, so I crawled my way up the table he was standing behind to get a better look. Just as I'm about to get a glimpse of his face- BAM!"

Damien slams a hand onto her desk. “Someone’s got their hand over me.” He clutches his hands towards himself, palms cupped together as if containing something within them. “Oh my,” he imitates in a slightly nasally tone. “Is that a spider? Poor dear, what’s it doing here? Please excuse me while I free the poor little darling.”

“Han doesn’t actually sound like that, does he?” Aster laughs.

“No,” says Damien. “But let me have my fun.”

Aster snorts as he falls back into character. “Next thing I know,” he says, hands raised up to his face. “I’m being abducted into the backroom and uncovered, only for a man with the worst dye job I’ve ever seen ogle my tiny insect body like a kid at a Founding Day bakery display. Holy Hale princess, you should’ve seen the look on his face.” Damien wipes a palm over his features, like he wishes he could physically blot out the memory. “His eyes were shining, princess. Shining. I’d never seen anything more terrifying.”

“But it’s Han! Your childhood hero!”

“I didn’t know it was him then, I thought he was some kind of nutjob! All I could see was that beady little gleam in his eyes- the unadulterated fascination.” Damien shudders a little at the memory, before giving his head a firm shake. “But anyway, I digress. After Han finally stopped eye raping me, only then did he bother to introduce himself. He told me that he knew I wasn’t actually a spider, and demanded I turn human again so he could offer me a deal.”

“Let me guess, the deal was… your apprenticeship?”

“Someone get this girl two cookies.” Damien presses his cheek into his palm, mouth curling into half a smile. “Yes princess, my apprenticeship.” His gaze slips away from her, falling onto some point past her face. There’s a lull before he speaks again. “And well… I’ve been here ever since. I can’t believe it’s already been a year.”

There’s something both sad and wondrous about the way he says it. Aster thinks she can understand why.

A year. Aster thinks back on the time she spent stuck within the walls of her family manor. A whole year of silence and cold. A whole year of counting down the days and pressing wishes into the palms of her hands; of remembering the mother she still mourned, the best friend she’d missed, and the father she once had.

Aster forces her voice to turn light. “A year, huh,” she muses. She lifts her feet onto the desk, tucking them against her so she can wrap her arms around her knees. “What was it like, learning from the royal mage for a whole year?”

“It was amazing.” Damien looks back at her with a grin. “People can say what they want about Han, but no one knows magic better than him.” The look on his face falters. “Still, it’s not like they care about that. To most people, magic’s just some scary, lurking thing that’s bound to wreak havoc on their lives again. It doesn’t matter that Han’s only trying to help them.” Damien slumps back into his seat. “Unless we change the public’s perception, all the work we’re doing for the magic tower is going to be moot.”

Aster’s brow furrows. “Is public perception still so hostile? Even after all Han’s done during the Crimson Fever outbreak?”

Damien scoffs. “It’s going to take more than a miracle cure for him to win over the public. Especially after the Witch Trials.” Damien leans his head back, chin tipped to the ceiling. The sigh that leaves him is bone weary. “We have our work cut out for us, that’s for damn sure.”

Aster takes in the tired slump of his shoulders, the faint shadows underscoring his eyes. “When did you get back?” She asks. “I heard that you and Han were out on some kind of expedition.”

“Ah, so you’ve heard?”

“Yeah, Seraphina told me. But she said that she didn’t know the specifics. What do you and Han get up to out there?”

“Nothing much really. Sometimes we venture into the cities, but mostly, we visit towns and villages in the outskirts. Y’know, spreading knowledge about magic, checking up on the medic buildings, trying to convince people that we’re totally not there to abduct their children or anything.” Damien shrugs.

“That doesn’t sound like nothing much.”

Damien shrugs. “All in a day’s work. As for when we got back… I think it was about an hour ago? I haven’t even unpacked yet.”

Aster frowns. “Hale, Damien, you should be resting. You could’ve seen me tomorrow or something.”

“I mean yeah, but- I heard that you were here already and that you’ve been around for a whole week. And well-“ His gaze skitters away from hers. “…I had to come.”

His words leave Aster feeling warm, though her worry still hovers on the fringes.

“Anyway,” Damien says abruptly. “That’s enough about me. What about you, princess? How’s the palace been treating you?”