I lift a shoulder. “I’m going to use my power, the same as always. Use myself as a shield.” I grin, if only to make her feel better. Anything, to make her feel better. “I make a decently good one, wouldn’t you agree?”
It won’t work, not as any real, long-term solution.
Rib-sinking worry is all I feel from her. How to tell her I’m not worried? That for the first time, I feel completely at peace?
“Will you keep your promise?” she says. “To help me at the Centennial?”
It’s in just over half a year. I wonder if my realm and I will even survive that long.
If we do ... I’ll help her. I’ll be her shield. Her power. Anything she needs from me.
“Of course, Hearteater,” I say. “It’s going to be fun pretending not to know you. To introduce myself to you.”
In truth, I can’t imagine acting as if I haven’t felt her every shade of emotion on my tongue. As if I haven’t noticed endless details about her through hour upon hour of watching, waiting, and paying attention.
“To pretend I don’t know that you love chocolate, and touching your hair, and that you blush when I look at you for more than a few seconds. Or that you hate the cold and love to dance, and you frown when you lie.” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “You really do, by the way. You should work on that before the Centennial.”
She blushes, and I want to memorize that color, the color of her shock, the color of her pleasure, the color of her happiness.
I want to paint my castle with it, if only for a chance that she would live there with me.
Feelings radiate from her like an avalanche, snowflakes catching in my hair and melting against my skin.
“And it will be fun pretending like I don’t know the shadows at your feet puddle when you’re happy. Or that, for some reason, you’ve had healers remove every one of your scars, except for the one I gave you. Or that you have a magnificent tub in your bathroom, and an even more magnificent ego.”
I tense, realizing she’s discovered things I haven’t even noticed, or admitted, about myself. She’s been paying attention too.
I feel everyone else’s emotions, yet have spent my entire life feeling misunderstood.
I feel seen for the first time.
Known, for the first time.
My own eyes are burning.
She bites her lip. “And that, even though, I hated you,really, really hated you ... whenever I’m not with you, whenever I’m with anyone else, I feel hopelessly alone.”
Alone. That was how I felt before I met her.
I don’t feel that way anymore.
She has filled an aching part of me I didn’t even realize was empty. I can’t imagine not seeing her every day for the rest of my life. Every day before her seems dull, wasted. Colorless. Empty.
My life used to be shadows and death, but she has filled it with life and color.
She is my star, guiding me through the night.
I take her hand, and she says, “At the Centennial ... we’re going to be strangers.”
“No,” I say, frowning at the word. “We could never be just strangers.”
“So what are we then?” she asks, sounding desperate to know, desperate to understand. Her own longing fills the space between us. “If not strangers? If not ... enemies?”
I know what I want, and it isn’t what she deserves.
She deserves more than me, but I don’t care. I’m not sure how much time I have left before the dreks end me and my realm, but this, I know for certain:
I’ll follow her for the rest of her life, if she lets me. Even if she doesn’t, really.
