It is unfair of him to hold her here, to cradle her, when he has so little of himself to give. It is unfair to press his forehead into her, to breathe in her scent, to allow himself to drown in this moment. He knows that. He knows that he is emptied, hollowed out, wrung dry. Too often, too many times, he had given of himself to others. First with Joelle, in a way that was pure and youthful and seemingly eternal. Their story had not been perfect—he had never been perfect—but it had seemed untouchable. The story writ in the cosmos of his life, seared into his heart. And then, he had watched her die, bleed out but feet from him.
There had been others. Minette, soft, gentle and steel underneath, surviving the worst of circumstances and coming out stronger, straightening her shoulders to be there for her children, even when they bore the same eyes as he who had carried her ill fate. But, she too, was wrenched from him. Gone.
Magnus feared there was nothing left to give, nothing else worth having, but he could not push her away. Not when she had carved her way into his chest from the first time she had spat venom and bore her teeth. He could still remember the fire in her eyes, the serrated edge to her words. All the rock and stone exterior that gave way to this now, her nestled by his side, all heat, all strength, but restrained—for him.
He closed his eyes, hating himself for his weakness, but giving into the tide of them, falling into the pull of his need for her. “I should not ask that of you,” he half growled into her neck, his voice hoarse as he pressed into her, wondering that his skin did not alight from the heat. “But I cannot help myself,” he admitted, mouth traveling down her neck, at the curves of her he had come to know so well.
“I am weak when it comes to you, Ellyse.”
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)