The world spins around him, and he is not certain how to navigate it.
Not certain of anything anymore.
All he knows is that the poison that had once lived only on his skin, a buried secret that he could easily ignore, now lives throughout him. He feels it in every breath that he takes. A whisper of a thing that feels like a crook of a finger—a shadow that tempts him to step further into it. It’s a need, a dangerous desire, and his nostrils flare as he tries to mentally scramble back away from it. As he tries to avoid it entirely.
No, he wants to scream. No.
But his protest is without purpose, because it’s too late—it is his burden to bear now.
His eyes open as she finally steps toward him and there is a weak part of him, still childish and needy, that wants to collapse against her. That wants to hold her and be held. To know the comfort of her. But just as he reaches for her, she reaches for him, and the contact of mouth to shoulder is not the familiar warmth that he knows so well. Instead it stings and he yelps, taking a stumbling step back, his eyes wide.
For someone else, he might have lashed out in fury. Might have blamed them for the pain, but even as his shoulder aches—burned from the cold—his eyes only widen, his body beginning to shiver in pain.
“What did I do?” he asks, low voice tight, wondering why she had punished him so.
turn your head toward the storm that’s surely coming along