CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
The warmth that spreads through her when he places another kiss against her skin is hotter than her own dragonfire, and she does not care if it reduces her to ash. But in the wake of the smoke that he leaves behind she feels the sorrow twisting like vines around her chest, and try as she might to swallow the guilt that has haunted her for years, she finds that she can’t.
She had avoided this for years, letting herself be consumed by fear and comparing him to everyone else in her life that had ever let her down, and still he had waited for her.
She presses back into him when he rests his forehead against hers, laughing quietly around the knot she can feel forming in her throat. “I’d never let you off that easy,” she tries to tease in return, but instead of a lilt to her voice there is only an ache. Her pale eyes close, and for several heartbeats she focuses only on the weight of him against her, letting the solidness of him ground her. “I’m so sorry, Savior,” she finally says softly, withdrawing from him just enough to break contact but not stepping away entirely. “I’m sorry that I made you wait so long, when I should have been in Tephra with you all along.”
Her blue eyes hold his for a moment, and she tries to think if she has ever even told him about Badden, or if that is yet another thing she has kept from him—another brick in her wall that she expected him to blindly tear down, an impossible obstacle he didn’t even know he needed to cross.
“I was so afraid of being left again that I thought keeping distance between us would somehow make things easier, but all I did was hurt us both.” She can taste the bitterness of the tears that are trying to find their way to her eyes, but all they do is burn behind them and in her throat, lacing her words but never actually falling. She wants to ask him to promise her that he isn’t going to leave, that he isn’t going to be like everyone else, but she realizes that she is the one that owes him the promise. That she has given him hardly any reason to believe she is not going to run the way she has her entire life, meanwhile he has proven himself to her time and time again. “I promise I’m not going anywhere ever again,” she touches her lips to his cheek, stepping forward to once again place herself against his chest, like he might feel the truth beating in her pulse. “Every part of me is yours.”
@savior