[private] my bad habits lead to wide eyes staring at space

[Nashua]

He breathes out softly, billowing the air between them as Illuminae answers him. "I'd never want to take that away from you," he tells her, appreciating her honesty as much as he appreciates that she is something separate from all the sorrows he has recently known. She wraps them both in a cloak of darkness, and Nashua understands that they are hidden away from the world. (If his mind had been on other things, he might have realized that this was the same magic that kept the secrets of the Shadow clan.)

"You are not this kind of dark," he tells her - thinking of Gale and his father, thinking about the Curse that they had both inherited. Thinking about the lives it ruined, about everything it had taken, and all the devastation that it had left behind in its wake. It had taken his son, possibly his brother and his mate, and now the thoughts consumed him about who it would claim next. His other children? Those of Yanhua's who remained here? What about Noel? Illuminae?

Illuminae might be able to wield shadows - might even be a part of the dark - but Nashua was certain that there was light at the heart of her.

"I thought -," Nash continues on to tell her, and he's tentative with these words. If she had grown up in Taiga, had she heard the stories about the monster that once roamed these woods? Some Northerners did, but most recalled the rape and attempted murder of their Khaleesi, Neverwhere. And the striped pegasus had grown up under those accusing stares, once they had learned who his father had been. He hadn't known about the Curse then - the way that it traveled through the male line of his family like wildfire - but as he turns his blazed face to the tri-colored one of Illuminae, he braces himself to see those accusations again. "How else do you overcome something horrible like that?" he asks flatly, "I thought that if we could come together, there could be a way to overcome all that evil."

Nashua nearly spits out the last words, realizing now how foolish that dream had been.

But then her words catch him, and for a moment, Nash stands suspended. She had family in Hyaline? "It's dangerous," he tells her in a low voice. Bolder was safe, Noel had assured him of that. "Especially for those that can't shapeshift." The thought of Illuminae going there makes his stomach curl; she can't shift. Mazikeen would try to turn her to ash and Gale would -

No.

Her touch grazes against his cheekbone, and the green of his eyes darkens where she casts a shadow. They are treading a fine line, and Nashua tries to be careful of it. He breathes out again, carefully. "You saved my life," he says hoarsely, "You spared me from Death and then acted as if you hadn't done something kind." Those memories are hazy, dulled from his injury and bloodloss and the Eclipse, but he remembers this clearly enough: "Like you weren't someone kind."

The way he determinedly turns his head to meet her mismatched eyes says that he would never be convinced otherwise.

"Isn't it already?" he finally asks, feeling the ability to change his color, his height (and possibly more) surging beneath his skin, threatening to drag him under.

@illuminae