I turned back to the view, but my hands wouldn’t stop fidgeting in the folds of my cloak. The words pressed against my teeth.
“He touches me,” I said at last.
Erindor didn’t move, but I saw the tension return to his shoulders.
“Kaelen,” I clarified, my voice flat. “He touches my wrist. My shoulder. Not always in obvious ways. But it’s constant. Quiet. Like it’s his right.”
A pause. A breath.
“And I don’t know how to say no without…without it costing someone something. Jasira. You. Elyrien.” I looked down. “Maybe even me.”
He didn’t respond at first. I glanced over. His jaw was clenched, his mouth set in a thin line. His hands had curled slightly at his sides.
“It’s not your job to protect me from that,” I whispered. “I wanted to speak of it freely for a moment, that's all.”
He turned to face me finally. His voice was low and rough at the edges. “Then why does it feel like it is?”
My breath caught.
Not because I was afraid. But because I wanted to lean into the warmth I saw flickering in his eyes.
But I didn’t know how.
I didn’t know how to move toward something that might disappear the moment I reached for it.
I looked down, blinking so fast it felt like a silent plea for the tears not to fall. “I don’t belong here,” I whispered, the words catching my throat.
“You’re not the only one who feels that way,” he said quietly.
His voice held no pity, only something that sounded like understanding.
We stood there like that for a while, both of us watching the sky, both pretending we didn’t want to say anything else.
The silence between us stretched, silver and fragile, like a thread caught between stars.
I shifted slightly, brushing the back of my hand along the stone railing. His hand was already there, fingers barely touching the surface, and the light contact between us sparked like frost cracking under sunlight.
I stilled. So did he.
Neither of us moved. Although our hands weren’t truly joined, they were close enough to share warmth. Close enough to make my pulse trip over itself.
His voice was low. “You know…” A pause. “If I were a braver man, I’d say something wildly inappropriate right now.”
My heart hiccupped. I turned toward him slowly. “Like what?”
He glanced at me sidelong, with that rare, crooked half-smile playing at the corner of his mouth. His eyes gleamed.
But he didn’t answer.
Instead, he leaned forward slightly, a breath closer, enough for the air to shift. Then he let the moment dangle there, teasing.
I stared, stunned, heat crawling up my neck. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like that.”
His brow rose faintly. “Like what?”
