This wasn’t how he expected it.

He expected something beautiful and tender and not so sad. He expected something that wouldn’t leave him feeling so damn broken—so emptied out. He thinks about continuing because the path before him is so clear. He could find something like satisfaction in walking it, but she deserved more than this and, in a strange turn of events, he finds that he feels like he deserves more than this too.

He wants to stop her before she says the words that will ruin him but he can’t find his voice fast enough. Instead, he crashes up against the wall and feels his bones break on impact. The words cause his breath to leave him suddenly, expelling from his lungs and leaving him lightheaded. This has been too much—too much since the first moment that they met. This nearly splinters him apart on the syllables.

“Kensa,” her name is so perfect on his lips and he wants to keep it that way.

He presses his cheek to hers and feels the fire within him die—feels it spluttering and he feels so, so cold in the aftermath of it. It’s a freeze that will accompany him, he thinks, because he doesn’t know how he will ever recover from this. If he will ever be capable of recovering from something like this—from her.

“There have been so many moments when I wanted to say those words to you,” and then he laughs, his stormy eyes closed. “Which is an insane thing to say since we barely know each other.”

It’s been more than a year, but it feels like just yesterday.

And they had only just met.

“I wanted to tell you how my heart was yours,” his voice is quiet, a rumble on his tongue and, for the first time, he cries. It’s just a few tears, but they fall, leaving salty tracks down his clenched jaw.

“But I can’t like this—not like this.”

He takes a step back and the place where she had been pressed against him is impossibly cold and his face is ravaged with his grief. “I would have given you my everything if it would have been enough.”

But he hadn’t been. He hadn’t.

“I have to go,” he shakes his antlered head, taking a step back. “I just—“

He turns, breathing hard.

“I have to go.”

And without another word, his wings flare and he lifts his exhausted body into the sky and away.

BRIGADE

when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake