She refuses to turn back the whip cords with their iron and bone braided in, because these are truth. So another man’s back splits and bleeds under the measured lash of her tongue. And still she will not lie. As if she might balance her past omissions with the brutality of honesty.
Stupid girl.
“No!” It is too ragged and she too remembers fighting any show of weakness before a hard man who refused the desire that burned between them. Kensa has crossed beyond that and her eyes are shining and intense. Brigade’s anger, his pain amplifies her own and she struggles for breath to fuel the words. “You were real. It was real! I just didn’t know how...” He doesn’t want to hear. His wings grow dark against his sides, the feathers splaying and crimping along his sides like the scales of a dropsied fish. It is an ugly horrible twisting pain and he has done nothing to be owed even a fraction of it.
The three steps she takes closer still leave a chasm between them but they tire her as much as a thousand. Its worse when he says these next words, when she knows how close they really had been in all that he does not say. Hot tears dash down her cheeks no longer to be held from her burning and unblinking eyes. Brigades hatred she will not be able to bear, not amplified by what it should have been instead except she was too early and he too late. She is the most honest liar in the world, and there is an evil in that blacker than almost any other. Kensa has only seen it after everything she cares for has already nearly burned away.
“I know, Brigade. Gods, don’t you think I know? Didn’t you feel everything I wanted for us? I couldn’t go no matter how much you tried to be rid of me.” It’s hard not to succumb to anger then, pointless and self-loathing. “I couldn’t. I wanted you and then I needed to be with you and the time between was an instant.” Nothing she says sounds right, it is all hollow and worthless before the look of confusion he wears. So instead she takes the remaining steps required to reach him, though she hardly remembers doing it once she is there within his reach. Kensa does not touch him, but speaks softly and waits for whatever punishment he will level upon her person. “You hated me that first day and if you do again now I understand. I am going to end up feeling for you either way. Some part of her hates the weakness, the submission of the words but Kensa does not stop, turns her topaz eyes away. “It was too late to tell you, and now it’s too late to stop.”
