“Violent.”
The word lands heavily, full of implications. Violent. He’s saying that the idea of turning me over to others makes him want to hurt someone. Kill someone. That his instinct to keep me produces a protective aggression he didn’t choose and can’t explain.
Where’s the fear? This violent, aggressive dragon wants to keep me. That alone would make any normal person hyperventilate.
I’m not a normal person.
I close my journal and set it aside, breaking eye contact because maintaining it any longer will lead somewhere I’m not ready to go. “Tomorrow will be worse than today.”
“Is that a prediction or a certainty?”
“In the Reach, they’re the same thing.”
He’s watching. I feel it.
I watch him back, through the veil of my lashes, counting his breaths and tracking his micro-movements and collecting details I’ve no business noticing.
The night passes slowly. Sleep comes in fragments between stretches of hyperawareness—his presence a constant pressure at the edge of my consciousness, impossible to ignore, impossible to escape.
A current runs between us now. Unnamed. Unacknowledged.
