Well, I tried my best.
???
It was about an hour later when my phone started vibrating again with messages over and over. The weight of Elizabeth’s new emotional state could be felt through the echo of every chime.
I sighed, knowing what it was even before checking. We were currently on the page where the dragon rider, Riven Greenwich, died.
Elizabeth;No.
Elizabeth;I hate this.
Elizabeth;This isn’t fair at all.
Elizabeth;No, like seriously, there were literally other things they could have done but killing him was unnecessary.
Elizabeth;God, I’m in so much pain, Snow White.
I rubbed my temple, my finger hovering over the phone, waiting. I could almost hear her voice in my head, rising with frustration, laced with that quiet, dramatic intensity.
Elizabeth;You could reply at least.
Elizabeth;My world,Callan, you suck at comforting people.
My lips twitched, then I texted.
Me;I do remember suggesting we stopped reading.
Elizabeth;No, you didn’t. What you did was give me false hope. You told me the talisman would protect him. You let me walk right into the fire.
I exhaled. She was…impossible, insane and dramatic. But hell, I wanted it all. Her chaos, her fire, her intensity. She was driving me insane.
Me;You said you needed to see how it ended.
Elizabeth;I was wrong, okay? You should have stopped me.
A pause. Then another flurry of texts.
Elizabeth;I actually need a moment to process this grief.
Elizabeth;Riven deserved better.
I dragged a hand down my face, exhaustion weaving into my bones. I just wanted to lie down and rest. Yet I was here, listening to her being utterly ridiculous, allowing myself to be caught in the whirlwind of her emotions, letting them bleed into me in ways I had never let anything else.
Elizabeth had done something to me. I had no clue what it was. But I could feel it, in the way my body reacted to her, in a way I couldn’t control. And that was dangerous, reckless. A soldier shouldn’t care too much. Though temporary, I was sitting on the throne of a centuries old Russian empire. I had so much at stake, so many people to protect, too much to lose if I suddenly found myself a weakness. I shouldn’t be caught in a web of common human emotion.
No, not love. Love had never done people like me any good. If anything, falling was the first step to destruction.
But here I was, breaking that number rule. Falling.
I was falling, so fast, and so hard for Beth Fraser, like I would die if I didn’t hear her voice for a day.
My fingers moved on their own to her profile picture, subconsciously clicking on it. It was just a portrait of her, her wild fiery hair framing her oval face, her rosy lips in a cute pout, two fingers, which looked like some sort of sign, held over her face. And those green eyes that always had me paralysed, staredright at me. Just like that, my heart began to race again, my veins trembling beneath my skin, my face, body on fire.
She always did this to me–made me tremble. Like I would fall apart if she touched me a second longer.
There was a time as a child when I felt emotions like humans did. I felt love, I felt pain, I felt sadness and I fear. Then I grew up and everything flattened into grey, empty, harmless things. I felt nothing because I sat at a place where nothing reached me anymore.
Now everything was colour and noise and heat. Too vivid, too alive. And the emotions all at once crashed around me, almost unbearable, like my body itself would soon shut down from the strain of remembering I was still alive and feeling again.
