She watches him in thoughtful silence, half expecting him to get up and leave the moment he had the chance. At the very least she had expected him to wrench away beneath her touch, but he didn’t do either of these things. He was unpredictable and perplexing in ways she wasn’t used to, especially considering she had thought that she knew him.
That was a mistake she rarely made, too. She never assumes she knows anyone.
Thinking you knew someone led to dropping your guard, and dropping your guard always led to being hurt in ways that not even she enjoyed.
Silence stretches between them, thick and nearly tangible, and she wishes just for once she could be stronger than she is. She wishes she could dig up her infatuation with the dark and twist it until it melded into something real, until it could shape her tongue to leave marks that lasted long after she was gone. She wishes, just for this moment, that she might haunt someone the way that they haunt her, that maybe she could break open their chest with no intention of filling it.
She wishes she could walk away, wishes she could ignore him when he speaks, but of course she can’t.
So much of her light has been corrupted, and yet she is still the furthest thing from cruel.
“I would never do that,” is her soft reply, and most of the warmth has returned to her voice as she steps back towards him. With her head lowered she presses her lips to the top of his neck, and she rests there for several heartbeats, until she asks him in a voice that threatens to tremble with the hurt that has been coiling like a knot in her chest ever since that day in Nerine, “What did I do, Ashhal? Why do you act like you can’t stand me anymore?”
