A shuddering breath escapes her lips when his nose presses to her neck. Reflexively she leaned into the touch, those pale brown eyes closing for just heartbeat as the racing of her pulse slowed. If he had been anyone but a perfect stranger, she would have tucked herself against his chest, buried her sooty white face in the tangle of his mane. Instead she held her distance, uncertain, with dismay etched like shadow in the dark hollows of her delicate face.
“I’m not hurt.” She tells him and her voice is just a whisper, a murmur of sound tainted by a poisonous shame. “I didn’t fight, I didn’t get there in time. I should have.” The look of dismay deepens and she turns her face from him, those nearly gold eyes cast low to the dirt and grass at their feet. “I-” her breath catches and she turns her broken face back to him, “I should have tried harder.”
His next question coaxes some softness back to her face, her eyes. “Yes.” Is all she says, her expression as quiet as the whisper of her voice. But she isn’t sure how much to tell him. She had been born in the Amazons, but her mother had never served the kingdom. They had stayed because father had family ruling, because it was as safe a place as any. But Ilka had never been involved in the Kingdom, not there, and certainly not when they had migrated to the Chamber. She had every intention of learning in the Gates, but she had only arrived a few weeks ago and the laws and common practice were still entirely unfamiliar.
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you,” her eyes lift and settle on his, shadowed by the furrowing of her brow, “I shouldn’t have told you.” But she doesn’t know this for sure, it’s a guess, a thought shaped in a frightened mind. But the realization wraps cold, skeletal fingers around her heart. What if telling him had hurt the kingdom in some way. Her stomach seizes. “I don’t know how do to this. I don’t know what I’m doing.” There’s an edge of desperation in the echo of her heartbroken confession.
And when he speaks again, her heart crumbles further, the edges turning to dust in her chest. She wants to tell him she’s sorry. Sorry for her clumsy observation, for his loss. But pity wasn’t a thing that healed, it was a dangerous feeling that had a habit of deepening the hurt. She takes a hesitant step closer, and another, so that she can slip beneath his neck and press her mouth gently to the curve of his chest. His heart beats beneath her lips. “They’re just in here now. You can keep them there forever.” She pulls back and her eyes lift imploringly to his, uncertain and vulnerable, “That’s what I do.”
ILKA
makai x oksana