The Binding

The University Occult Archives were located in the lowest basement of the oldest library on campus. It was a place of dust, shadows, and aggressively forbidden knowledge.

It was near midnight. The temperature outside had plummeted, the weather forecast predicting the first major blizzard of the year.

Leo stood at the head of a massive, oak reading table, his hands trembling as he laid out the components. A silver chalice. Crushed obsidian. A heavy iron chain, its links inscribed with Enochian runes of command. He had spent the last three days avoiding Julian, buried in the darkest texts he could find, desperately searching for a loophole.

There wasn't one. The texts were unanimous. To permanently anchor a high-tier etheric entity, the summoner had to assert absolute dominion.

Leo gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles white. He felt sick to his stomach. He was preparing to enslave the only being he had ever loved. But the alternative—the echoing silence of his apartment, the return of the crushing, eternal cold—was unbearable.

He began to chant the preparatory rites, his voice echoing off the stone walls. "*Vinculum ferreum, voluntas mea, in aeternum liga...*"

The temperature in the archives suddenly spiked. The shadows dancing on the walls deepened.

"Leo."

Leo spun around. Julian stood in the doorway of the archives. He looked terrible. His usually vibrant, sun-kissed skin was pale, his edges blurring and shifting like a mirage. The ambient heat he emitted was barely a warm breeze. He looked at the iron chain on the table, then up at Leo.

"Julian, you shouldn't be here," Leo said, his voice shaking. "I'm fixing this. I'm going to anchor you."

"By forcing a collar on me?" Julian asked, his voice lacking its usual resonance. He walked slowly into the room. "Is this what your human courtship has taught you? That love is possession?"

"I am trying to save your life!" Leo yelled, tears finally spilling over his cheeks. "You said you didn't want to go back! You said it was boring!"

"It is," Julian agreed quietly. "But being a thrall is worse. I wanted to experience dating, Leo. I wanted to experience choice. Choosing to walk with you. Choosing to hold your hand. If you cast that binding, I will never be able to choose you again. I will only obey."

Leo looked at the iron chain. It felt impossibly heavy. His desperation warred with the deep, fundamental horror of what he was about to do. He looked at Julian, at the earnest, golden eyes that had looked at him with nothing but warmth and affection since the day he appeared.

"I can't lose you," Leo whispered, breaking down.

"You aren't losing me, Leo," Julian said, stepping close. He didn't touch Leo, but the faint, lingering heat of his presence wrapped around him like a ghost of an embrace. "You are just letting me go."

Outside, the wind howled, a vicious gust rattling the high basement windows. The first snowflakes of the blizzard began to fall.

Julian’s form violently flickered. The edges of his tweed jacket turned into floating embers. He looked down at his hands, watching them slowly dissolve into golden ash.

"The snow is here," Julian murmured. He looked up at Leo, offering one last, brilliant, heartbreaking smile. "Thank you, Leo Thorne. It was a wonderful date."

"Julian, no!" Leo lunged forward, reaching out to grab him.

But his hands closed on empty air. Julian shattered into a thousand brilliant sparks of golden light. They hung in the air for a fraction of a second, casting the archives in a warm, beautiful glow, before extinguishing entirely.

The profound, agonizing cold rushed back in, absolute and unforgiving. Leo collapsed to his knees on the stone floor, entirely alone.