“Don’t,” said Laila tiredly.
She sat beside him, and the faint scent of sugar and rose water drifted through his senses. He lifted his arms. Laila did not look at him as she worked with cold efficiency, making quick work of his bandages and drawing out a clean set. Every brush of her fingers felt like fire inside him, and perhaps that was what woke up some corner of his memory. He remembered the sudden, crushing pressure against his skull… the stench of the lagoon water sloshing up the sides of the gondola, dampening his pant leg. The world dissolving to black until he heard her voice.
“If you die, I can’t stay mad at you, Majnun, and if I can’t at least be angry with you, I’ll break.”
She’d called himMajnun.
Perhaps it had been nothing but days since she’d uttered that name, but Séverin felt their absence inside him like years grown old and mossy.
“I heard you,” he said.
“What?”
“I heard you call meMajnun.”
Laila’s hands on him stilled. He felt the slightest tremor of her fingers on his skin. Foolish or no, he couldn’t lose the chance to speak plainly to her.
“I am yours, Laila… and you can fight it or hide it as much as you want, but I think part of you belongs to me too.”
She looked up at him, and there was such grief in her eyes that he almost felt ashamed for speaking.
“Perhaps,” she admitted.
His heart leapt at the words.
“But that small part is all I can spare,” said Laila. “I have so little of myself left. I cannot give any more to you.”
He reached for her hands. “Laila, I have been a fool. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to see this, or say this, but I love—”
“No. Please, don’t,” she said, pushing his hands aside. “Don’t put that burden on me, Séverin. I cannot hold it.”
A terrible weight settled in his chest.
“Would it truly be that?” he asked. “A burden?”
“Yes!” said Laila fiercely. “What I feel for you is a burden. It hasalwaysbeen a burden. I move closer, you step back; you move closer, I step back. I don’t have the time to play this with you! We may have gotten this far, but what about everything else? Plague Island and the lyre andeverything. You’re still convinced that somehow you’ll get these powers of divinity, and what if it doesn’t work? Do you really want me to divide my attention between keeping myself and my friends alive and loving you based on whatever whim guides you for the day? Because I can’t.”
“Laila—”
But she wasn’t done.
“You once offered me impossible things, Séverin. A dress made of moonlight, glass slippers—”
“And I’d make that happen!” said Séverin. “Laila, you don’t understand the power I felt when I touched that instrument. Anything you ask, I could give you—”
Laila wrapped her arms around herself, shaking. “Can you give me safety, Séverin? Can you give me time? Can you carry my trust?” She paused, taking a deep breath. “Are you even capable of ordinary love?”
He felt slapped. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that when I go to sleep, I dream of someone who knows which side of the bed I favor, who sits across from me in happysilence, who argues over which dishes belong in which cabinet,” said Laila quietly. “Someone whose love feels like home… not some insurmountable quest ripped from a myth. Someone whose love is safe… Do you understand that?”
He did.
Because that was how she made him feel.
Safe.
He wanted to make her feel safe.
