He presses my head against his chest, holding me in a tight embrace. My fingers clutch at the sides of his shirt near his waist. I don’t want to touch him, because every touch is a curse. It haunts me for months, replaying in my mind until the next time I can touch him again, until one memory can be replaced by another.
I want to stay like this forever. If I could hug him every second of my life, I wouldn’t ask for more. But that’s impossible. I know how this goes. In a few minutes, he’ll leave me again, vanish for months, and I’ll be left aching.
Only this time, he says something that tilts my entire world on its axis.
“I’m taking you with me. You’re not okay, and I can’t leave you here anymore. I’ve already talked with Mom, Dad, and Ma and Pa.”
My head snaps up, I push against his chest to see his face. A frown etches itself across his face, his jaw locked tight, his usually frozen eyes clouded with a storm he can’t mask. Zoan showing emotion on his face means only one thing, he’s deeply upset, too upset to hide it.
He stares at me for seconds, or maybe minutes. I don’t know anymore. When he’s with me, time loses all measure.
Then he takes my hand. “Let’s check your luggage. We leave in a few minutes.”
I follow him downstairs without a single word. His hand is large and steady, wrapping around mine like a chain I never want to break free from.
When we reach my room, Wen is already there, halfway through packing my luggage.
She looks between Zoan and me. He releases my hand, and it takes every shred of willpower not to seize it back.
“I’ll be downstairs,” he says, then turns and leaves.
Wen watches the door click shut before rushing toward me. She cups my face between her palms. “Did he scold you?”
I shake my head.
She sighs, dropping her hands and resuming the packing.
“He looked on the verge of murder when he came in here.”
“He said he talked with Ma and Pa about taking me with him.”
Wen turns her face toward me, her lips pressed in a thin line. “If you can count ‘I’m taking Avira with me. Wen, pack her luggage,’ as talking… then yes, he did.”
I sit on the bed, my hands curling into my lap. “Did you tell him something?”
She shakes her head.
Zloban
I force myself to calm down.
She is alright.
She is fine.
She is coming with me.
I repeat those three sentences in my head over and over.
I knew about her depression for a long time, and today it scared the living hell out of me. I felt like I was about to lose her.
She had been sitting on that damn edge of the parapet for three hours, even with the sun burning down on her. Detached from her surroundings, she was somewhere else, lost in a place inside her head where I can’t fucking reach her.
“Are you calm now?” Grandpa asks.
I nod, unclenching my fists and forcing myself to sit straighter, trying to look composed.
He doesn’t buy it. “No, you are not. What happened?”
