We were both discovering the world around us. He gave me the night sky and the beach and hamburgers and a too-soft bed and hot showers and he made me believe my wings were beautiful and he convinced me there were such things as shark shifters.
But now, he gives me silence.
And for the life of me… it feels like it means something.
This horrible silence around him.
Just like his presence no longer feels real and that must mean something, too.
“I’ve lost you,” I say, tears welling in my eyes. “You were my enemy all along, and I didn’t know it and now, the person I thought you were… I’ve lost him.”
All of the fight drains out of me as I realize…
I am not okay.
It’s an insight I probably should have had before I tore through an unassuming apple orchard and tried to pick a fight with the keeper of dark magic.
I am not okay.
But of all the situations where I could safely break down, this is not it.
He leans toward me, inching closer with every heartbeat, and I know I should probably step away.
“If I could change the past, I would,” he says.
He lowers his head to mine and his lips brush my cheek, pressing where my hot tears have had the audacity to trickle down my face.
His touch is gentle. Soothing.
He moves to my other cheek, pressing kisses to the multiple tear tracks there, too.
His head is bowed, one cheek against mine. “I did not want this pain for you.”
I prepare to push him away, because he has no right to comfort me right now, but before I can make a move, there’s a sharp pain in my shoulder.
I lurch away from him, my claws snapping out again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Emil’s hands fly up, and I register that he’s holding a small, sharp-looking object for me to see.
It’s a sliver of wood.
A glance at my shoulder tells me it was one of the splinters that got stuck in me during my orchard-destroying frenzy.
I glare at him. “Ow.”
He points to his chin where I smacked him and pointedly says, “Ow.”
My glare deepens. And then eases.Damn him.
He reaches toward me again, eyeing me carefully. “There’s another splinter in your arm. It’s pinning the material to your skin. Let me just?—”
I wrench backward, registering the way the final tendrils of his dark light recede, leaving me free to move around.
“I can get it out myself.” I quickly pluck at the narrow splinter, then at the splinters in my thighs and calves. The way I’d hitched the dress up and tied it into a knot has left my legs very exposed to flying shards.
At least the dress won’t be torn when I let it down again.
