She could see the change in him as he remembered, could taste the bitter copper of tension as it rolled off his skin in chaotic waves. Whatever it was he was remembering, whatever ghastly recollection was taking shape in his mind seemed as though it were preparing to undo him, to unravel those sloppily knit-together threads protecting his sanity. She shifted toward him, her indigo lips pressed urgently against the curve of his jaw. In her own expression there is horror and uncertainty, a burden she aches to share with him, but it will be clear from the question in her eyes and the way it furrows her brow that this horror is not her own.
“No,” she tells him quietly, pressing ever closer as the shudder ripples beneath his skin, “he wasn’t.” She’s careful not to repeat the name, such a strange name, and she resents it for the way it still seems to hold power over him. For a moment she’s quiet beside him, curled so close again, uncertainty pressing her mouth to his neck, his shoulder, his chest. And then, in spite of her better judgement, she whispers, “Did he hurt you?”
She pauses then and her green eyes disappear beneath the blue of her forelock as her brow furrows. There’s a thought, a stray thought, and she can feel it pressing against her temples like a headache. But the harder she tries to let it in, the further it seems to go, to fade. She cringes against him, frustrated, now completely unable to shake the feeling like she had missed an important detail. And then it found her, wriggled across her mind like a cold, wet worm. She tensed, pulling back enough to see his face. “You died.” This isn’t a question and it isn’t quite an accusation, but there’s something buried there beneath the realization. “If you died, then how do you live. How are you here.” It isn’t distrust that smolders in her expression, it’s something else, something suspicious.
But it’s not of him.
Him, she trusts.
As if to solidify this particular realization, this birth of faith within such a shattered, guarded heart, she whispers, “My name is Malis, by the way.”
There was power in a name.
MALIS
makai x oksana