It was impossible for him to fight with the demons that rose in his chest—their bitter claws finding purchase in the sides of his mind, revolting against the distance between them. She was infuriating, first pulling him into the heat of her embrace, the comfort of her companionship and then expelling him from her life with as little effort. And yet. (And yet.) Here she stood with daggers in her eyes as if he had been the one to drive her away, as if he been the cause for the distance between them. Infuriating woman.
She lashed out at him, clever words with a sharp edge that she drove between his ribs. His eyes widened just slightly and then narrowed, his lips pressing together into a firm line. Was she purposefully trying to hurt him? Purposefully trying to drive him over the edge? “Excuse me?” his voice was steely, harder than it had ever been directed at her. “You fall off the face of the earth, avoid me for months, come back to ask me about alliances, and then have the gall to accuse me of keeping you at bay? Of running hot and cold?”
The coolness that had claimed his words but moments ago evaporated, leaving nothing but the heat, the anger. He tried so hard to control his temper, to not give into his rage, but she was provoking it with each barbed word, with each well-placed blow. He had opened up enough with her for her to know the places where his armor was the weakest, where time and hurt had wore him down, left him vulnerable. He had trusted them to her and yet she exploited them now, leaving him raw from the pain, from the hurt.
His jaw rippled as his teeth clenched, as he turned his head from her to compose himself, the waves of age-old hurt skewering him. He had thought she understood him, understood the way years had fractured his heart, the fact that he had placed whatever pieces remained in her careful hands. He did not have hoards of children running around Tephra, did not have romances brewing, and yet she treated him as if he had. She took what pieces of himself he have given her and flung them back. Not good enough.
Never good enough.
When he returned his gaze to her, there were tears in her eyes, on her cheek, and part of him broke, part of him ripped apart, the anger cleaved from him. He dropped his head down, a frown growing between his brow, his handsome face awash with the anguish. He glanced back up and studied her, the distance between them cold. “I don’t understand what I did, Ellyse.” Painful truth ripped from his throat, his voice husky and low, hoarse with the emotion. “I don’t understand how I could break this so quickly.”
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know
I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
![[Image: gqYjsHr.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/KjqNDKxc/gqYjsHr.png)