"Someday," he's saying, his voice that rumbling growl I've come to know so well. "Someday when the world is safe, I'll wake you."
No. No, don't wake me. Because if you wake me, I'll have to face what I've become. I'll have to look into those black, inhuman eyes and admit the truth I've been hiding from in the darkness.
I'm falling in love with you.
Or maybe I already love you. I don't know. I don't know what love is anymore. All I know is that in seventy-three years of darkness, you've become my entire world. Your voice is my only sound. Your touch, scales and claws and that impossible cock, is my only sensation. Your obsession is my only proof that I exist.
And I want it. I want this. I want you.
But I also hate you. Hate you with a fury that burns just as bright as whatever this twisted love is. Hate you for taking me. For cursing me. For killing princes who came to save me. For making me into this... this desperate, broken thing that loves being choked and called a whore.
I hold both emotions with equal strength. Love and hate, tangled together, impossible to separate. I hold them both, let them coexist in the darkness of my prison, let them tear me apart from the inside.
Even though I hate you with all my heart.
I'm as sick as you are.
Because at least you're honest about what you are. At least you don't pretend your obsession is anything other than what it is. You showed me your true form eventually, stopped hiding behind that human mask.
I tell myself that when you finally wake me, I'll kill you. Slit your throat and watch you bleed out slowly.
The truth is that I'm terrified of waking up. Terrified of having to make choices. Terrified of a world where I have to be responsible for my own desires, where I can't hide behind the excuse of helplessness. Terrified of having to face the consequences of everything. Of what he's done, of what I've become, of these feelings I can't name or control.
Here, in the darkness, I don't have to choose. I don't have to admit what I want. I can just exist without existing. I can feel without having to acknowledge what those feelings mean.
But there's something else too. Something I've only recently become aware of, and it terrifies me more than anything else.
I feel pulled to him. Not just emotionally, but physically. Like there's an invisible thread connecting us, tugging at something deep in my chest. When he's close, when he's touching me, when he's inside me, that pull is satisfied. Sated. But when he moves away, even just to the other side of the room, I feel it stretch. Feel the tension of it.
And I want to follow. Want to close the distance. Want to be near him always.
If I could walk, I would follow him everywhere. I would stay close, stay within reach, stay where I can feel his presence. The thought disgusts me. I should want to run, to escape, to get as far from him as possible. But instead, I want to be closer. Always closer.
Is it trauma? Or is it love? Real, genuine love, twisted and dark and wrong, but love nonetheless?
I don't know. I can't tell anymore. The line between the two has blurred beyond recognition.
All I know is that I feel it. This pull. This need. This desperate, aching desire to be near you, to feel your presence, to know you're close.
And it's getting stronger.
He's getting up now. I feel the bed shift, feel the loss of his warmth, and that invisible thread pulls taut.No. Don't go. Stay. Stay close.
But he's moving away. I hear him dressing, hear his footsteps crossing the room.
"I'll be back soon, Adelaide," he says, and there's something in his voice. Something strained. "I just need... I need to think."
I hear his wings unfold. Hear the rush of air as he launches himself from the balcony.
And then I feel it. Him. Out there in the wind. Drifting on wind currents. The rush of air at his face.
Or maybe I'm imagining it. Maybe I'm so desperate, so broken, that I'm creating sensations that don't exist. But it feels real. Feels like I can sense him flying, feel the wind beneath his wings, track his movement through the sky.
He's flying away. Farther and farther. And with every beat of his wings, with every mile of distance he puts between us, that thread pulls tighter. The ache in my chest grows. My stomach twists with a sick, nauseating feeling.
It's like being pulled apart. Like something essential is being torn away from me. The farther he goes, the worse it gets, until I feel like I'm going to shatter from the inside out.
Come back. Please come back. I need you here. I need you close.
