DESPOINA
She has never been embraced like the way that he embraces her. Never felt something so all-encompassing. Something so complete and she knows that there is not a single thing she would not do to protect it. She would tear herself apart—but that was easy. It was a simple thing for her to promise because she did not cherish herself. Did not set herself apart as something to guard. But for him? She would tear others apart. She would attack the innocent and burn down kingdoms. She would become the monster that she knows lives beneath her skin. The thing she still holds back on a leash.
If he needed pain and sorrow and hate to survive, then she would incite it.
And would damn herself to hell for it.
At his whisper, she shakes her head, shivering beneath his touch—that thing that still feels so new and so precious. “You won’t lose me,” and her voice is fierce. Determined. “You’re mine,” is all she says, not bothering to counteract whether he was bad or not. Because that didn’t matter to her. She did not care whether he was terrible or angelic—because he was hers. He was the only thing in this world that had ever been hers. Shy, she kisses the slope of his shadowed shoulder. “You’re mine, Torryn.”
He pulls back and the space between them is a yawning chasm, bitterly cold, and she shivers again, but this time from the distance and not the pleasure of him. “I won’t leave,” she says with a stubborn lift of her chin, finding the first thing in her life worth fighting for. Worth digging in her heels for. “I have never wanted to be happy,” she says and perhaps it is a lie, but it feels like the truth in this moment.
“There is no happiness if I leave you,” her black eyes sharpen. “You would condemn me to a life of longing. A life of wishing.” She wants to close the distance between them but despite the spine that she has shown in these moments, she is still Despoina and there is not enough confidence to assume that he would accept her, that he would not just step away again. So she holds herself separate.
“Let me help you.”
Her voice waivers and there is a rush of agony through her as she imagines what she stands to lose. She lifts her chin again, her heart pounding in her chest. “You say you need negative emotions to survive,” she swallows, “so then you must feel them off of me. You must know what I’m feeling now.” The hurt from his indiscretions. The despair at the thought that she may lose him. The self-loathing for her anger.
“Feed, Torryn.”
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do