I blink up at him, at the creases still knitted between his brows, the hair falling into his eyes.
The breath I loosen shudders the air between us.
“My bugs…” I echo. “I… I pin bugs… and frame them.”
My cheeks roar against the cold.
For a long moment, he stares at me, blank.
Then a single eyebrow lifts, arches in derision at me, and it scalds my face even hotter.
I don’t try to explain it. I don’t tell him that it’s the only thing that turns off my mind. That it brings me back from dissociation, and grounds me, and takes me to mindfulness and meditation. Or that it reminds me of my mum—memories of sitting on the floor while she cleaned the gift shop at the museum, and I picked through the bins to find those little framed treasures.
Maybe I don’t have to explain it.
Maybe he feels it, hears it, churning in me.
Whatever he feels, it has his grip on my jaw softening. It doesn’t vanish completely, just eases, until his thumb brushes over the bone of my jaw for my mouth—and strokes over my lips.
He lazily wipes at the tears gathering there.
His tone is soft, bordering on a whisper, as though he can’t risk hearing his own question, “What is a vinyl?”
I blink—and more tears fall.
“It’s music.”
And I would do anything to hear music again.
I add, my own voice a whisper, “I remember when life was living—and with you, it hasn’t been that. It’s been surviving. And that is suffocating me.”
The pad of his thumb strokes over my mouth again, glazing my lips with my tears.
He’s curved over me, the white lacing of his rich green eyes sweeping over my face, considering every inch, every freckle, every blemish, closely, too closely, and I can feel it, every cold stroke of his gaze brushing over my flesh.
“You are an emotional human,” he tells me, and my face crumples. He considers the creases. Unfazed, he goes on, “You are loud and volatile. Self-pity has made a home in you. It encourages you to forget what you are.”
My throat thickens with tears.
“You sacrifice your people for your own safety. You do not care about the humans we kill or enslave. You care for your possessions.”
Silent, I weep.
But there’s no viciousness in the way he tells me these things about myself.
He just states them as facts.
As memories—of the first time he saw me, and I did nothing to save Ramona. Of the second time, and I tried to leave Emily behind to save myself and Bee.
He isn’t wrong.
That twists my face with a fresh surge of tears, and I grab at his forearm, solid and unmoving, and try to tear his grip from my jaw. “How can you feel everything from people around you—and still be so fucking empty?”
“You misunderstand, Tesni.” His grip on my jaw firms. His fingertips glide up to my cheeks, catching the tears in their paths. “There is no kindness that survives in me. Nothing for you to nurture and grow. I am hollow.”
His fingers curve around my jawline to tuck under my chin, and lift my face.
Tears cling to my lashes.
