He wasn’t sure why things between them felt more confusing than they ever had.
He wasn’t sure what he had done to break it or ruin it but he knows in his heart that somehow he has. Somehow he has managed to mangle it before it even got a chance to grow. It leaves him with an ache in his gut and stones in his chest that he struggles to breathe around. It leaves him wandering Sylva with more and more questions every day, his gaze turning toward Hyaline and then dropping to the ground.
She had been so quick to leave him that morning.
He was hardly going to force his company on her.
So he isn’t sure how to react when he sees her walking toward him, least of all when he sees that she has a small child by her side—small and fierce and beautiful. Something hits him in the chest and it feels like he’s lost his breath so he does the only thing that he knows how: he grows still. Very still. His wings tighten around his sides and his antlered head lifts just slightly, mouth pressing together in a thin line.
She approaches and he doesn’t say anything.
Instead his eyes just grow more fierce, burn brighter, the light in them keen.
For a second, he studies his daughter with that fevered intensity, feeling his chest tie into knots and his heart lodge in his throat. He has a daughter, he thinks. He has a daughter and he didn’t even know. He has a daughter and he’s expected to not completely ruin this one. To not completely botch this thing.
When he finally does look away from her, he looks up to Kensa.
The silence is long and tense and he struggles to breathe.
When he does finally manage to speak, it is only one word:
“Mine?”
BRIGADE
when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake