“You still wish to touch me?” he whispers, the words so quiet I almost miss them.
The question breaks something fundamental inside my chest. The disbelief in his voice, the way he asks it like the answer could go either way, like my wanting him is somehow in question.
“Of course,” I say, and I put every ounce of certainty I possess into those two words.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Dyfri turns around. It’s like watching a flower bloom in reverse, each movement careful and hesitant. His dark eyes bore into mine when he finally faces me. Searching. Probing. Looking for the lie he’s convinced must be there.
The intensity of his gaze is overwhelming. I feel exposed, turned inside out, every secret thought laid bare under that desperate scrutiny.
“You are in shock,” he says eventually, his voice clinical and detached. “When your mind catches up, you’ll hate me.”
The matter-of-fact way he says it, like it’s an inevitable truth rather than a fear, makes my stomach clench.
“Why?” I blurt out in complete bewilderment. My heart is beating so loud it is the only thing I can hear, drowning out reason and logic and everything except the need to understand why he’s doing this to us.
“Because I am something to be feared,” he says softly, and then he drops my gaze. Lowers his eyes to the floor like he can’t bear to see the moment when I realise he’s right.
The admission is so quiet, so broken, that it takes a moment to sink in. When it does, my chest tightens until I can barely breathe. Seeing him this distraught is awful. This is Dyfri, my brilliant, complex, wonderful husband, and he’s standing here convinced that he’s a monster.
“I’m useful to Silas and Cai right now,” he whispers, his voice getting smaller with each word. “But afterwards...” He trails off, unable or unwilling to voice whatever horrible ending he’s imagining.
I reach for his hand instinctively, then stop myself, hovering just above his skin. The space between us feels like an ocean.
“Oh, Love.” The endearment slips out before I can stop it, soft and aching. “They don’t hate you. They were surprised and taken aback, but none of them want to hurt you.”
I’m not the brightest, and I don’t know a thing about magic, but I’m pretty good at reading people. The looks on their faces in that warehouse weren’t fear or revulsion, they were awe. Wonder. The kind of respect you show something sacred and powerful.
I’m sure I’m right, and it’s Dyfri’s trauma clouding his judgment, painting every reaction in the worst possible light.
He peeks up at me through his lashes, and the sheer disbelief in his expression is breaking my heart into a thousand jagged pieces. He really can’t believe that people don’t want to hurt him. His eyes are a little frantic, bright with a brittleness that speaks of glass about to shatter.
“They hurt me because they feared me,” he says, and I know instinctively that we are no longer talking about the Resistance.
“Scared when the only thing they knew was that I was half-unseelie and just come of age.” His voice cracks slightly on the words. “Imagine if they knew how powerful I was? I had to hide it.”
The picture he’s painting is devastating. A child learning to make himself smaller, dimmer, less threatening so that the adults around him wouldn’t see him as something to be destroyed.
Gently, carefully, I take his hand. He lets me, and when he does, he hides an anguished sob with a hitch of breath that nearly undoes me completely.
“I didn’t want to scare people and I didn’t want to be given to my uncle.”
I have no idea what he is talking about. I don’t think Dyfri really knows either, the words seem to be tumbling out of some deep, wounded place where logic doesn’t live. All I know is that he is upset and hurting, and that’s the only thing that matters right now.
“Can I hug you?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
My arms are aching to hold him. To squeeze my care and concern into him through skin and bone and whatever magic allows souls to touch. I want to hold him so tight his bones can feel he is not alone anymore, that he will never be alone again as long as I have breath in my body.
Dyfri nods, the movement small and uncertain, and I wrap myself around him immediately. I press myself so close that there is no telling where I end and he begins, until we are one entity breathing in the same rhythm, sharing the same heartbeat.
His breath hitches again, and his entire body trembles against mine, like he’s coming apart at the seams.
“I don’t hate you,” I tell him, the words fierce and certain. “I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t want you to go anywhere, now, or ever.”
Dyfri inhales sharply, the sound cutting through the quiet like a knife.
My stomach flips over into a hard knot as I realise what I’ve just said. The truth has tumbled out without permission, but now that it’s in the open, I can’t take it back. Don’t want to take it back.
“I’m sorry, that was a shitty time to blurt that out, but now that I have...” I pause and take a deep breath, gathering my courage. “When the portals close, take me with you or stay on Earth. Please! I know I shouldn’t make any demands of you. I’m sorry. But if I lose you I don’t think I will survive.”
