But he holds the blackbirds back, and she thinks that maybe he is capable of more.
It’s a mistake that she’s made a thousand times before this moment, because she judges their worth by the feelings that they shield her from, and in these moments there are so many he barricades her from. For a second she forgets the way the sunlight lit her eyes. For a second she forgets the way the river lapped at their ankles and left them aching for more. For a second she forgets everything else except the leather of his wings.
But he doesn’t want her.
And she can’t blame him, because she wouldn’t want her either, because she is carved full of holes and can’t hold anything for long. She can’t blame him when there are fissures that run deep splitting her skin and exposing the ugly truths she harbors under her flesh.
‘You’d give me the same promise, then?’
No, because she can be a hypocrite. No, because she doesn’t promise anything anymore. No, because she isn’t capable of giving anything real like that.
“No,” she whispers, and her voice cracks along its edges.
Because she can’t promise Cordis won’t come, even if she isn’t violent, even if she hurts in ways that aren’t tangible. If only she knew. If only she knew why her silver skin was wrapped in lightning that last time. If only she knew about the boy. If only she knew all the ways he cried out, and all of the ways that Cordis did not stop.
‘I serve the Chambers,’ she hears, when at last she is listening again, instead of thinking about all of the places they once knew each other. It turns out nothing stays barricaded for long.
“I served something wicked once, too.”
spyndle
you are the prettiest thing that I will ever know