DESPOINA

She thinks of him often. Constantly. He becomes the beat of her pulse until she cannot think around it. She wonders at the depthless look of his eyes. The shadows that consumed him. The way that it had nearly consumed her—even from so far away. It reaches greedy fingers for her even in the depths of her dreams and she wakes with hunger pangs, dying for something she had never even consumed before.

It makes no sense, but that does not stem the flow of the need.

The desperate, all-consuming need.

It is only by chance that she walked the forest today as herself and not the hound, and when she finally does hear his voice, she feels a flood of relief. She is not ready to share that piece of herself yet. Not ready to show him all the parts of her that she herself is not yet ready to confront. The shadows of her soul.

At first, she thinks it may be a figment of her imagination. Just a breath of chance that she conjures the sound of his voice, but when her eyes lift and she sees him, she knows that it’s not her imagination.

He is real.

For a second, she says nothing. Just stands there with the breeze winding its way around her delicate legs, pulling her dark mane up around the curve of her jaw. If she could see herself, she might think that she looked pretty—but that would be impossible. Her head drops. She could never look that way.

“Torryn,” she hates herself for how sweet his name sounds.

She hates herself for how quickly she folds into the need.

I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do

DESPOINA

His red eyes hook into her until she can barely breathe, but she doesn’t run. She doesn’t slip into the shadows and run until he is just a memory behind her. Instead she stands still—so very still—and lets the darkness trace lazy fingers up her sides. She lets the shadows of him call out to her until she feels her self listing as though they are waves washing up the shores of her heart, as though she is a boat set adrift.

“I’ve been okay,” her voice is quiet, always so quiet, as though she is scared of what might happen if it gets loud enough. Would she shatter? Would she simply fall apart? She doesn’t know. She isn’t brave enough to try and find out. “Just…around.” It’s pathetic and she drops her back gaze as soon as the words leave her lips because she is too ashamed to look at him. Too ashamed to see if know hers for what she is.

Broken.

Alone.

Unwanted.

A shrug of her shoulder as though none of this bothers her. As though she doesn’t mind being alone, as though this life is something that she has pursued her entire life and it wasn’t thrust upon her. “What about you?” It feels lame and does nothing to speak to the entire galaxies that spin in her chest when she looks at him. When she looks at the supernatural, ethereal beauty of him. The endless power of it.

Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.

She shuts it and looks down at her feet again.

I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do

DESPOINA

She’s not safe though, and part of her wishes he knew it. Wishes he knew everything that lies under the surface of her—those dangerous epiphanies that crash against the corners of her mind. Would he still want to be around her if he knew that she brought death with her? That she was a breath away from hell’s door step? Her own mother didn’t even want her. She can’t imagine that someone like him would.

So she buries it even deeper.

She presses all of these pieces of herself under the current and holds it still.

Despoina focuses on the way that his voice makes her insides shatter and then pull back together. How he feels so real and yet so far apart. How the sound of his breathing is enough to invite her further into the undertow. She can almost catch the edge of the lie in his voice, but she is too naive, too sheltered from the truth of socialization to truly understand it. So she lets the unsteady feeling it gives her settle.

It’s what comes next that truly sets her adrift.

Her blood runs cold at his confession, at the way he talks to her of his escapades like she is a sister. There is a flush of jealousy, of anger, and her body bristles with the hellhound. It’s just a breath of time. The canine races through her. Turns her coat into the shaggy fur, hackles rising. Her black eyes go red and glowing, not unlike his own. Her teeth sharpen. She inhales sharply and it disappears as quickly as it had appeared, the ugly emotions going under lock and key, leaving her standing there quiet and subdued.

If he was looking away, he wouldn’t have even seen the manifestation of her hurt.

She breathes for a few moments, waiting until she is sure that she will trust the shaking in her voice, in the quaking of her heart. “That’s not true,” she breathes, mind racing. “She’s so lucky.”

I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do

DESPOINA

The sadness is such a constant companion that she almost does not notice it is there.

Until she shifts suddenly and the weight of it spears straight through her. Then the pain of it is so acute, so strong, that she can barely breathe around it. She is left trying to figure out how to survive with the saltwater rushing into her lungs, the ground once again ripped out from underneath her.

And really - what right does she have to this pain?

What right does she have to him at all?

They are nothing but friends, if you can even call them that. They are acquaintances more than anything. She has no right to claim the man before her, he who would call himself a monster. She has no right to this pain, to this jealousy, that courses through her veins, clinging to every surface that it can hold onto.

She shakes her delicate head.

“Please do not apologize to me.” There is something pleading in her tone. Something desperate as she tries to fight for normalcy, realizing how she has ruined this chance at friendship before her. She feels something like shame race through her, battling with her jealousy. Her face crumbles, Despoina completely unable to keep her feelings hidden away, unable to hide her shame and panic.

She takes a small step forward.

“Please, Torryn,” she nearly chokes on his name. “Tell me about her.” She hates thinking about who this woman is who carries his child, but she has to know. She does. “Tell me about your child.” 

I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do

DESPOINA

The conversation so quickly turns on itself, that it leaves her head spinning. She has never known what it is like to have a normal friendship—to have a normal anything. She can barely understand what it is that she feels for him except this bastardly hunger that rages in her chest, gnashing its teeth at the thought of him touching anyone else. All she knows is the insistent, painful need to reach out to him. The need to know what lies beneath the billowing smoke and darkness, the red eyes that pull her under completely.

“Breckin,” she forces herself to say the name.

Forces herself to whisper it.

It is like a dagger to the heart and the sharpness at which it feels to have it buried in her is more than she finds she can bear. Her breath comes whistling out and she instantly feels the shame of revealing so much of her pain to him. Of laying it before him. “Your child should be so lucky to be like you,” she whispers in her silvery voice, looking down because she cannot trust herself to meet his gaze. “Be so lucky.”

She wonders what their child would look like.

Realizes too late how desperately she wants to find out.

When he looks back up, his voice sounds harsh, to her at least, and she trembles slightly as though being admonished. It is the only thing that she knows how to feel—the only emotion she can comprehend.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I am so sorry.”

Of course he wishes they hadn’t met, she thinks. Of course.

“I didn’t mean to bother you.” 

I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do