“What do you meannow?I told you. That was long ago.”
“But you’re still thinking about it.” Eva gave her a meaningful look.
“Yeah, well, Earth isn’t helping.”
“I think”—Eva squeezed her hands—“you’re still in love with him.”
“I was neverin lovewith him,” she assured her overly dramatic friend.
“Of course you were. Only love hurts like that.” Eva kicked at the grass. “I should know.”
One Aeon Pre-Great War
Lila didn’t know why she was crying. She’d known this was coming, but she couldn’t stop. Her skincrawledwith memories of Castor touching it.
Sagging against the obelisk, she rubbed her arms against her breasts and her palms against her face, but she couldn’t scrub the wriggling wisps of memory off. She couldn’t replace his hands with her own. She kept feeling his breath on her neck, his weight pinning her down on his mattress, the strange pressure of him pushing inside her…
And worse, a dull ache of pleasure. The kind she gave herself on occasion but she’d never wanted to feel coming fromhim.Apathy, she could stomach. Duty, she could stomach, but not enjoyment. Coming from Castor, it feltwrong.
She felt…she felt…like he’d been forcing her tofeel,not just act…and she’d thought her feelings, at least, were her own. But she didn’t own her body, so why would she own her feelings? How stupid of her.
Her only solace was that her pleasure had been fleeting. The rest of the act had been a chore, just something to get over and done with, but he’d probably want to do it again soon.
Then again and again.
For the rest of her existence.
Technically, they could have waited until they’d moved out of thedormitories, until their house was completed, but of course, Castor had wanted to do it sooner than that. And Lila, being herself, had argued until she’d given in.
Then she’d curled up in front of the Void and wept.
Help me!Make it go away!she cried silently to the wall of darkness, but the Void was indifferent. She’d always liked that it was indifferent to her, but couldn’t it help her just this once?
Just this once.
The most horrible part was that the whole time she kept wishing it was Luc touching her, and now that it was over, she never wanted Luc to touch her again. She never wantedanyoneto touch her ever again.
“Lila? Lila, are you okay?”
As if she’d summoned him, Luc appeared, frowning down at her like he’d done the first time he’d found her huddled against the obelisk. At least that time she hadn’t been a sobbing mess.
“Go away,” she croaked. He shone brightly as ever in his crisp white and gold robes, and she’d never be shiny again. She’d lost something of herself, and she didn’t know what it was, but she knew she couldn’t recover it.
Dully, she noted Luc’s writing tools. He must have come there to work on their project. Did he ever do anything else? He was always so convinced that everything he did would work out exactly how he wanted it to. What type of existence must he have had to convince him of that?
She’d never felt further from him, and yet, he knelt down next to her. He brushed her cheek with his knuckles, asking if there was something he could do, and she jerked from his touch, her frustration boiling over.
“Didn’t I tell you to go away?!” she snapped, glaring at him. “Can’t you do what you’re told for once?!”
“I’m just trying to help?—”
“I don’t need your help, so go away! Not everything is about you!”
Luc didn’t go away. His scowl deepened, and he settled down next to her like he was going to stay there awhile.
By the aether, she was going to take him by his pristine collar and fling him into the Void. No, no, she was going to take him by his collar and shake him and shake him andshakehim…
Why couldn’t he let her be miserable?! Everyone else could.
