He takes a step forward, brows pinching and eyes thick with concern. “It matters to me. It matters to Vera. It matters to Syra.”
Syra. The pang is a sharp blade in my chest. “Syra will never know what’s become of me! She likely already thinks I’m long dead.” I take one step forward, chest heaving. “Why do you think I came here? To this fucking place? Why do you think I switched with Syra? I’ve been living like this for so fucking long—“ I break off with a jerk of my head, nails digging into my palms. The room is hazing with my brewing storm. I don’t know if I’m breaking or if I already broke right along with the split daemon still crashing over me in two separate pulses. I cross an arm over my aching chest, trying to hold it all together.
“Pan, please just take these,” he says offering the vials out once more. “You’ll feel better once you do.”
“Do you want to subdue me, Sitri? Make me behave?” I drop my voice yet it still shakes my hands trembling with it as I take the vials from him. “What else will you do to get this thing under control? You wonder why I didn’t tell you—“ I choke out. “Because last time…turns out you’re just fucking like them.” He flinches as I lodge the vial at the wall and it shatters. “Maybe next you could try smoking it out or starving it out or beating it out or—fucking—drowning it.” I smash the second vial against the wall. He doesn’t flinch this time, staring at me with anguish reflecting back in his eyes as light fissures shake the walls.
I don’t feel any better for it. I just feel foolish and embarrassed by the admission.
I flee to the bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind me, hoping he has the decency to leave me be for once. I collapse in a heap on the bed, trying and failing to hold onto the daemon. I dig my nails into my ribs as it wreaks destruction against the furniture and walls.
The door clicks open. “Go…away…before I hurt…you,” I sob, muffled into the mattress.
“You don’t scare me.”
The bed shifts with his weight, and he tugs my hands out from my ribs. I shove at his chest, hard, and he clamps his hands around my wrists. “Let me—“
“Stop,” he demands, voice booming with authority. I yank at my arms and he grips them more firmly, shaking them as he commands, “Stop it. Don’t push me away. It’s not going to work.”
“I…already…did,” I sob. He falls still. “You don’t even…want to be around me anymore.”
I give another futile yank of my arms and he pins them above my head as he stares down at me. Unable to hold his gaze, I turn my tear-streaked face away. His mouth finds my ear. “Why would you want to be around me, Pandora? I said I wouldn’t hurt you and then I did. And then you were almost gone because of it.”
“Because…I…killed her.” My words are barely coherent around the heaves of my sobs. “I…killed…her.” He smashes his face against the side of my head, pressing me down into the bed. “Do you think I wouldn’t have done it myself?” he hisses. I stiffen, hiccuping as I turn my head and search his face and find only the cold, brutal truth in his eyes.
All of the sharpness in his face and eyes soften and his grip around my arms suddenly loosens as he sets me free. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I’m sorry. I—I don’t want to hurt you. I want tofix you,” he growls.
I pull my hands down to hide my face behind them. “Not…fixable.”
“You are,” he says adamantly. “I’m just not going about it right.” There’s an unhidden anger in his voice again as he says, “What did they do to you?”
The words crack through whatever semblance of composure I was grasping onto. This time I don’t fight him as he pulls me to his chest. He palms at my face, cups my neck, and tangles his hand into my hair. “What did they do to you?” He asks, quieter this time.
I empty out there against him, the words speaking to a younger, smaller version of myself buried deep inside of me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my hair. His hand travels down my spine, molding me tighter against him, and then trails back and forth over the small of my back where I know the scars align under my dress. “Youmatter tome.” He taps his finger there to the rhythm of the words.
When my tears finally abate, I feel like I’ve shredded through the thick, defensive layer that protects me. It leaves my soft, vulnerable middle exposed. That’s what Sitri brushes against with every stroke of his fingers, tracing unmethodical patterns over my cheek and jaw.
I don’t know what the rules are, my heart still slightly bruised. The last time we’d been this close he fled. I’m so scared of doing the wrong thing I remain completely still, sucking in deep lung-fulls of his scent as if it could make me whole if I could just get enough.
He sweeps my hair away to access my neck, cradling it before painting a feather light touch across the crown of my ear. I’m not used to being touched, my skin as tender and breakable as an overly ripened fruit. Each caress feels like it’s brushing right up against my swollen, tender, throbbing heart.
He trails his fingers down my arm, springing goosebumps in his wake. Taking my hand, he traces the lines in my palm. I meet him there timidly, propping my hand on my elbow as we trail our thumbs over the pulse in our wrists, lacing and unlacing our fingers.
I turn my head to watch our hands dance, entranced by the dichotomy of them, his large, long straight fingers, mine small and crooked. Somehow this feels even more intimate than the things we’ve done before and my blood steams.
A sharp whizzing noise whirs through the air. It grows louder and then quieter. I ignore it at first until it’s happening over and over again in quick succession. “What is that?” I whisper.
“It’s Div,” Sitri sighs.
“What’s he doing?” I heave. The question is rhetorical. I know Div is displaying his agitation at finding me in such an intimate position withthe enemy—the person intending to steal away my magic.
"He gets like this sometimes,” Sitri says, sounding faintly disappointed. “He doesn’t always do well with human emotions.”
“Wait,” I say peeking up a face I know must be puffy and tear spattered to send him a questioning look. “You think he’s doing this because I was crying?”
Sitri looks reluctant to admit it, but he nods.
“Why would you say that?” I whisper.
