She doesn’t know that the words are for her and her alone.
When he says that he will tear Kerberos apart, it is a promise that he will come unhinged. That, when he frees the beast caged beneath his breast, he will risk everything (and everybody) in order to avenge her. Because his control is tenuous at best. He does not know what will happen if he relinquishes himself in his entirety to the dragon. The molten fire will char his throat. His body will bend and his bones break until there is not a shred of Sabrael left, only the behemoth that blots out the sky.
He’s Become before, of course, but not by choice.
Blood had already salted his lips and desecrated his innocence, clawed at whatever youthful dreams he’d still harbored for a better life, a better world for his presence in it. Mercifully, he cannot remember what died to feed the beast, only remembers the spongy gristle of them between his molars. He knows, now, what can happen if he goes there again. Chaos will erupt – or not – and he’s willing to find out for her. He’s ready to stake other lives on permanently penalizing her perpetrator. She thinks he would do it for anyone. She is wrong.
He waits for Wallace’s blessing, but she turns away instead, draws into the shell of herself. The dragon has no reference for sorrow (only sees a weakness that Sabrael is blind to) so it retreats within him. Even with his eyes closed, the stallion can feel the smoke moving in the air between them, stirred by her shifting. He thinks she will touch him, reach out and span the space he so carefully put between their bodies. But in the long, terrible seconds, she stays away.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it fades like the smoke into the warm Ischian air. The long, aching seconds tick on in silence but not without change. The bay roan can see it in every part of her. His words corrode her strength slowly, desperately so, chiseling away the hard lines and edges she built out of necessity. She’s always been tough like the coconuts that fall, unaffected, onto the hard-packed sand at the edge of the jungle. But even if Kerberos had broken her open, Sabrael knows she, too, is just as meaty on the inside. This will not destroy her – not if he has any say in it.
A smile like low-dawn starts on his face. Now is the time to touch her, he can feel it as sure as the heart thudding in his chest. But just as he stretches his neck to brush her cheek whisper-soft, she startles into him. He doesn’t see the threat at first, and his hackles (and the dragon) raise. But when he turns, it is only Ashley standing in the sand a distance away. He blinks back his greeting, sharing the silent acknowledgment of responsibility they both feel. Wallace is on alert, again, and he knows he’s missed his chance. “We are here for you. But if you want us gone, we can be too.” “I can be” his eyes seem to say. It is not what he wants. He regrets the last time he walked away and left her with Ashley, if only because he wanted it to be him instead.
Sabrael