We’re watching each other as her sentence lingers between us, its meaning far deeper than coffee.
I nudge the plate of food I’ve prepared towards her. “But you have preferences.”
“Hmm.” She picks up the fork, using the side to cut off an edge of the omelette. “Sometimes. Depends on my mood.”
“Day or night?”
She smirks before taking a bite, then hums her approval,deepin her throat.
I wonder what it would take to make her reproduce that sound…
“Night,” she suddenly answers.
My darkness stirs. I refocus, trying to stop my eyes from lingering on her mouth.
But I am only a man, and she is everything.
“Why?” I study her, admiring the soft line between her brows, the way her tongue skims her lower lip…
“I’ve always preferred the moon and stars.” She smiles at me, and my hands curl into fists beneath the table. “But I still enjoy the sun, the heat, the life it brings.”
“You’re able to find beauty in all things.”
That smile turns more devious as she places the fork between her lips, slowly pulls it out, chews, swallows.
I am transfixed.
“Ask me more.”
“Me or Sai.”
Her sudden bout of laughter makes my chest tighten. Her eyes are alight as she grins, then shakes her head. I could sit here like this, watching her eat, think, breathe—forever.
“Wow, really?” She takes another bite, a sip of coffee, then finally says, “I can’t choose.” Her gaze drops.
“Good.” And I mean it—wholeheartedly. “You will never need to. You can have everything you want. Bitter and sweet. Light and dark. The earth, the stars, the world.”
“Julien…” The way she says my name. So soft and filled with disbelief at my proclamation, because that is what this is, a proclamation to her.
She softly shakes her head, before slipping another forkful of food between those beautiful lips.
“And what about you, Julien? Which do you prefer?”
“In what context?”I smile just enough to reveal a hint of fang. Her gaze latches onto it and she becomes quiet. So I decide to answer, “Sweet. Night. You.”
I break her haze as she scoffs at my answer. “You can’t prefer me over the others.” A curl escapes the mound piledartfully upon her head. I clench my fingers tighter. “The things you’ve been through together... I know I don’t know everything, but I know enough.”
Then she peers up at me. “Sai told me about the two of you.”
She places the fork down gently and my darkness pulses forwards, needing her to eat more, to regain her energy and replenish what we took—but she’s lost to a memory.
The words that Sai shared with her.
“He would still be there now, in that cage…” She grimaces, her darkness curling around her body in delicate vines of smoke. “I feelsickimagining it.”
“But I did find him,” I remind her gently, leaning over the table.
“You saved him from a life of torture and solitude.” Her eyes flicker between mine, filling with tears I don’t want shed.
